Toodle and Noodle Flat-tail: The Jolly Beaver Boys

by Howard Roger Garis

"Oh, I'm left all alone," said the baby. "I was out in the woods with my papa and mamma, and a bear and a wolf chased us. My papa and mamma ran as fast as they could, but the bear and wolf kept after them, and finally they got so close that my papa and mamma couldn't get away. Then my mamma hid me in this stump, hoping, I guess, that some one would find me, and then she and papa ran on and—and——"

But the little baby beaver cried so hard that she couldn't talk. Toodle and Noodle felt the tears coming into their eyes also, but Toodle asked, very, very softly:

"What happened after that, baby?"

"The—the bear and wolf carried my papa and mamma away to their dens," said the baby beaver, "and—and I'm left all alone. Nobody loves me! Oh, dear!"

"Don't cry any more!" said Toodle, and with his handkerchief he wiped the eyes of the baby beaver. "We love you, and we'll take care of you, won't we, Noodle?"

"Indeed we will!" exclaimed the other beaver boy. "We'll take you home with us, and you can be our little sister."

"Will you really?" asked the baby, who was old enough to talk, you see, and she could walk a little. "That will be lovely!" she said, and she stopped crying.

So Toodle and Noodle helped her out of the hollow stump, and then they made a little boat out of a piece of tree which they gnawed down, and they rowed the baby beaver across the pond to their house. And Mrs. Flat-tail said her boys did just right to bring the poor little thing home; and she took her for her very own baby and for a sister to Noodle and Toodle.

They named her Crackie, for she used to drop the dishes and cups and crack them. But no one minded that very much, for they loved Crackie so. And one day a wolf chased her and she threw an ice cream cone at him and cracked that, but it scared the wolf so that he ran away, which was what Crackie wanted.

So that's how Toodle and Noodle got a little sister, whom they loved very much, and some day Grandpa Whackum said he might find that bad wolf and bear and make them let Crackie's papa and mamma go. But lots of things happened before that.