"Yes, you had better get out your skates and skate to school," said Grandpa Whackum, who had finished his breakfast.
"But we have no ice skates," said Toodle, "and I don't believe roller skates would be very good."
"Not on ice," answered Grandpa Whackum. "But I'll show you how to make ice skates. If I had some long, clean bones now—"
"I know where there are some!" cried Crackie. "I saw Jackie and Peetie Bow Wow, the puppy dog boys, dragging some bones over on shore yesterday."
"The very thing!" cried Grandpa Whackum. "I'll swim to shore, under the ice, and get them. Then I'll make skates for you two beaver boys."
While the children were finishing their nice warm breakfast, Grandpa Whackum dived out through the front door of the beaver house. This door was under water, and the old gentleman beaver soon found himself under the ice that covered the top of the pond. But he was used to that. So he swam to shore until he found a place where the ice was broken through in a round hole.
Then, he popped out and along the frozen bank of the beaver pond he ran until he found the bones the little puppy dog boys had been playing with the day before.
"These bones will make fine skates for the boys," said Grandpa Whackum. "They are long and straight and smooth."
Down under the ice he went again, and soon he was once more in the beaver house. Toodle and Noodle were getting their books ready to start for school.
"I think it is too cold for you to go today, Crackie," said Mrs. Flat-tail.