Just then Toodle heard some one laughing, and, looking up, he saw Billie Bushytail, the squirrel boy, sitting on a tree branch right over the log cabin. Billie was eating a hickory nut.
"Excuse me, Toodle," said Billie, the squirrel boy. "I hit you, but I didn't mean to. I was eating a nut and it fell out of my paws and landed on your head. Did it hurt you very much, Toodle?"
"Oh, hardly any," said the little beaver boy. "You see I have a lot of fur on top of my head, Billie, and it bounced right off—the nut did, I mean—not my head."
I guess if the nut had hurt him, Toodle wouldn't have said so. Boys are like that, you know. That's the reason they don't cry, after they get over being babies.
"Come on down and play with us," said Noodle.
"Yes, do," invited Toodle. So Billie, the squirrel boy, scrambled down from the tree, and soon he and the two beaver brothers were playing in the little log cabin.
Oh, such fun as they had! They made up all sorts of games, including the one about Indians and soldiers, and then they played a new game called "Don't bite your Paws when all alone. You try to eat An Ice Cream Cone." That is a very funny game, only you have to have ice cream cones to play it, and it was a lucky thing Uncle Wiggily Longears, the old gentleman rabbit, came along just as Toodle, Noodle and Billie were ready to start it, for he had the ice cream cones with him in his valise, and he gave them to the boy animals to use.
Well, the old rabbit gentleman watched them playing about for some time, and then he hopped off to see his friend, Grandfather Goosey Gander, and Billie, the squirrel, went with him. So that left Toodle and Noodle alone. They played some more, and then Noodle thought he would make himself a little toy boat to go sailing in.
Noodle went off by himself down to the edge of the water where a nice little tree grew, and he was cutting this tree down with his sharp teeth, while Toodle was up in the play-cabin making believe he was a soldier on guard, when all of a sudden something happened.
A great big, old, gray wolf, who hadn't had anything to eat in a long, long time—not since Fourth of July I guess—this bad, old, gray wolf sprang out of the bushes and grabbed Noodle in his paws.