One day Toodle Flat-tail, the little beaver boy, hurried home from school with his brother Noodle, and said:
"I know what let's do! We'll get in our play-boat, and go off on a voyage. Maybe we'll find an island where oranges and bananas and cocoanuts grow, and we can play we're shipwrecked, and pirates and all like that."
"All right—let's," agreed Noodle. "Shall we take our sister Crackie along?"
"No, not this time," said Toodle. "She might be afraid if we played pirates, or anything like that. Besides, she is having a good time with her doll. We'll leave her home."
And, truly, Crackie, who was the baby beaver girl, who was always dropping things, and breaking or cracking them (without the least in the world meaning to), Crackie, I say, was playing with her doll. It was a new wooden doll, made from a part of a birch tree that Grandpa Whackum, the oldest beaver of them all, had gnawed down for the little girl. Crackie's rubber doll was asleep under the refrigerator, where she would be nice and cool.
So Toodle and Noodle started off in their play-boat which was a log hollowed out so they could sit in it. They used their tails for sails.
Now those beaver boys could swim much faster and better than any boat you ever saw, and that's why it is so queer that they wanted to go off in a hollowed-out log. But they did. Why, do you know, I have seen real boys who would rather get on an old raft made of boards, and paddle around in a mud puddle, getting all wet—they would rather do that almost any day than go to school, or have their hair cut or a tooth pulled. Isn't that odd?
Well, anyhow, as the peanut man sometimes says, Toodle and Noodle sailed off and Crackie stayed home and played with her doll. She made a new dress for it out of part of a clothespin and a lead pencil. And she made a hat out of a strawberry box, trimming it with shavings. That's what it is to have a wooden doll, you see.
And now, for a minute or so, I'll tell you what happened to Noodle and Toodle. This is where the scary part comes in, so cuddle down in papa's or mamma's lap if you like, though it isn't going to be so very scary.
The two little beaver boys sailed on and on in their play-boat and pretty soon they were nearly across the big beaver pond. And then they saw an island. It had some trees growing on it, and it looked to be a good place to pretend being shipwrecked, and pirates, and all like that, and Toodle called to Noodle: