"Oh, goodie!" cried Noodle. "Come on, Toodle. We'll fire them off and have a lot of fun. We'll make believe having a war, and shooting, and all that."
Mrs. Flat-tail didn't happen to be home just then, or I think she would not have let the boys take matches and start to shoot the firecrackers. Toodle and Noodle didn't mean to do wrong, but you know how it is yourself, sometimes.
So they shot off the old firecrackers, and some of them made a loud noise. It grew dark before the beaver boys had finished, and the sparks from the crackers looked quite pretty.
Then Mr. Flat-tail came home and heard, and saw, what the boys were doing. He said:
"Oh, Toodle and Noodle, you must stop this at once! You might set the house on fire!"
"Well, if we did, I could put it out with my water-pistol," Toodle said with a laugh.
"But, anyhow, we haven't any more firecrackers left," said Noodle.
"I'm glad of it," spoke his father.
And that night, when Toodle went to bed he put his water-pistol, all filled with a lot of ice water, right near him on a chair.
"For," he said, "maybe the bad old fox might try to get in tonight, and, if he did, I could squirt water in his eyes, and scare him."