"Yes, I'm here," answered Grandpa Whackum, the oldest beaver of them all. "I'm down here, boys, and if you don't soon come down here too, I'll go up there and tickle you so you won't know whether you're standing on your head or on your tail. Are you coming?"
"Indeed we are," answered Noodle, and then, getting brave, he suddenly threw back the leaf-bedquilt and jumped out into the middle of the room that was built upstairs in the beaver house, which stood in the middle of a pond of water.
Beavers, you know, are little animals like muskrats, and they just love the water, as I have already told you. They love it so much that nearly always they build their houses right in a pond, which they make by raising a dam to keep the water from running away, just as you do in the gutter on a rainy day.
"See who'll be dressed first!" cried Noodle, and then Toodle jumped out on the cold floor. Soon they were both dressed, for beaver boys have so much fur that they do not need to wear many clothes, even in winter.
"I won!" cried Noodle, who finished the last button on his shoes just as his brother Toodle was beginning to fasten his. "I'm dressed first."
"Oh, well, I don't mind," said Toodle. "I'll be washed first!" and he was, because there was only one wash basin in the boys' room and only one of them could get his paws in it at a time.
"Come! Come!" cried Mrs. Flat-tail again. "The cakes are getting cold, boys."
"I'll be down stairs first!" cried Noodle, and he ran for the banister, reached it ahead of his brother, and down he slid—"ker-bang!" landing on the kitchen rug. So he was downstairs first. Then both the little beaver boys ate as many birch bark pancakes as were good for them, and Crackie, their little sister, ate two and part of another one.
"Oh, look at our pond!" cried Toodle, as he gazed out of the window. "It's all frozen over!"
"So it is!" said Noodle. "Oh, it must be very cold!"