"No, Noodle, this isn't gold. It is yellow corn, that we ducks will eat this winter, just as you beavers will eat the bark of trees."
"Do you want me to help you carry it?" asked Noodle. Somehow or other he was just a little sorry that the bag didn't have in it some Santa Claus Christmas presents. But then there was time enough for them later, he thought.
"Oh, bless your tail, no!" said Grandpa Goosey Gander, with a laughing quack. "I shall manage it very well. But, since you were so kind as to offer to help, Noodle, I will give you an ear of corn. It isn't the yellow kind that we ducks eat, but a white kind.
"And if you shell off the kernels and put them in a popper or a pan over the fire the corn will pop, and you can put butter on it, and salt; or you can put sugar on it, just like down on the board walk at Asbury Grove. Here is your ear of pop corn."
"Oh, thank you very much," said the little beaver boy, as Grandpa Goosey gave him the extra white ear of pop corn. "I'll pop it tonight and give Toodle and Crackie some," said Noodle.
"Very good," spoke Grandpa Goosey, and then, slinging his bag over his shoulder he started for home, while Noodle went on to school. He left the ear of pop corn outside in a hollow stump, where no one could find it, for he did not want to take it in school with him.
"Well, what did Grandpa Goosey have in the bag?" asked Toodle of Noodle at recess that day.
"Corn," answered Noodle, "and he gave me some of my own to pop. We'll have a good time home tonight."
Well, when evening came in the Flat-tail house, and when the lessons were all done, Noodle brought out his ear of corn, and he and Toodle and Crackie shelled off the kernels. There was a fire on the open fire place, and when the logs had burned down to red, glowing coals, Noodle put the popper over them and shook it back and forth, just as Grandpa Goosey had told him to do, so the corn would not burn.
"Now, children," said Mrs. Flat-tail to them, "your papa and I are going over to call on Uncle Wiggily Longears for a few minutes. Grandpa Whackum is out to a moving picture show, and so you will be all alone. But I know you will be all right."