"You'd better wait until I cut my mud pie," said Crackie, and then, while her brothers watched she broke open the mud pie, which she had baked hard and dry in the sun, and there, inside it, covered over with clean, green grape leaves, was a lovely apple pie, all brown and sugary, with birch bark frosting in one place, and watercress candy in another, and inside—oh, my! I can't write any more about it, for it makes me too hungry.
"That's my secret!" said Crackie. "I baked the real pie all by myself, only mamma helped me, of course. And I put it inside the mud pie just for fun. I wrapped it up so it wouldn't get soiled. Will you have some, boys?"
"Will we!" cried Toodle, quickly.
"I guess we will!" shouted Noodle, and they both together kissed little Crackie. And then they ate a piece of her secret pie. Wasn't that nice? I think so, even if I did write this story myself. And on the next page, if the coffee strainer doesn't take the piano out to a moving picture show and leave it there for the banana man, I'll tell you about Toodle and the big log.
[STORY XVII]
TOODLE AND THE BIG LOG
One day, when Toodle and Noodle Flat-tail, the little beaver boys, were on their way to school, Grandpa Whackum, the oldest beaver gentleman in the beaver town, called to them:
"I say, boys, when you come home from school this afternoon I'll have something for you to do."
"Is it a secret?" asked Noodle, wishing he did not have to go to school that day, for he didn't know his reading lesson.