"Hey, Toodle, wake up! Wake up!" called Noodle Flat-tail, the little beaver boy, to his brother one morning. "Wake up! Breakfast is ready!"
Toodle turned over on the bed of white birch chips in the beaver house that was built in the middle of the pond of water, and said, sleepily:
"Oh, please let me alone, Noodle. I don't want to open my eyes yet. Let me sleep!"
"But don't you know what we're going to do today?" asked Noodle. "Have you forgotten what papa said?"
"Oh, it is a picnic? Are we going on a picnic?" asked Toodle, and this time he sat up on his tail and rubbed the sleepy feeling out of his eyes with his handlike paws.
"No, it isn't exactly a picnic," answered Noodle, as he combed out his fur with his hind claws so as to be nice and neat for breakfast. "But papa said he'd show us how to cut down a big tree today. Don't you want to learn how to do that?"
"Indeed I do!" cried Toodle, and he rolled from his bed in such a hurry that he nearly fell out of the front door, which led into the water. In that case Toodle would have had a swim before breakfast.
Not that he would have minded that much, for, like all beavers, he loved being in the water just as much as being on land. In fact, beavers, when they wear any clothes at all, as they have to, in stories of course, wear a kind that water cannot hurt—sort of rubber garments, you know.
"Oh, goodie!" cried Toodle. "That's what I want to do—cut down a tree," and he opened his mouth and felt his four sharp, orange-colored front teeth that were purposely made for gnawing. They were always sharp, too, and made in such a way that when they grew dull they sharpened themselves. No scissors-grinder ever had to come to the beaver colony to sharpen their teeth. Nature did that for the queer animals.
"Let's see who'll be first at breakfast," cried Noodle, and then he and his brother washed their paws and faces, brushed some dirt off their broad, flat tails, combed out their fur until it shone like Grandfather Goosey Gander's silk hat, and went into the dining-room, where Mamma Flat-tail was getting breakfast for her husband and for Grandpa Whackum, the oldest beaver of them all.