Well, pretty soon, in a little while, not so very long, Toodle and Noodle and Crackie were all ready for school. Off they started, after kissing their mamma and Grandpa Whackum good-by. Into the water they jumped, and away they swam.
The school was in an old boat, as I have told you, and often this boat would float away, making it so hard for the animal children to find it that they were sometimes late. But this time Professor Rat, the school teacher, had tied the boat fast to an old stump, so it was easily found, and no one was late.
Toodle and Noodle took their little sister inside the school.
"Ah, ha!" said Professor Rat, kindly. "A new little pupil! Well, Crackie, we are glad to see you. We hope you will like it here. I think first I will put you in the kindergarten class. Later on, when you learn more, you may sit with Toodle and Noodle and Sammie and Susie Littletail and the others."
So Crackie went in the kindergarten class and had a little chair all to herself. Her teacher was a nice lady bug, who could play a tin piano solo so tickily-ickly-like that you would always want to dance. And sometimes she let her pupils march around the room while she played.
Well, after a bit, Crackie looked around, and over on one side of the room she saw her brothers, Toodle and Noodle.
"Say, Toodle!" cried Crackie, right out loud in school, "I'm hungry. Can't I have some of that ginger-bread cake mamma gave you to put in your pocket?"
"Oh, hush, Crackie, dear!" cried Toodle, but all the other animal children laughed to hear Crackie call out loud that way in school.
"But I am hungry!" said Crackie, and tears came into her eyes. You see she had never been to school before, and she did not quite know how to act. "I'm very hungry!" the little beaver girl went on. "Can't you give me something to eat, Noodle, dear?"
Noodle got red behind his ears to think that his sister acted so in school. Professor Rat looked up over his glasses.