So the winter months slipped away. At last spring melted the ice on the pond. Here and there in the black water little brown heads came popping up. They went plowing toward shore, leaving v-shaped ripples stretching out behind. Up the banks scrambled the beavers,—mother beavers and father beavers, big brother beavers and big sister beavers, and all the little beavers who had been babies the year before.
Away roamed the fathers up the brook, to have a good time travelling all summer long. The grown-up brothers and sisters started out to build dams and houses of their own. The little fellows wandered into the woods to find their dinners of tender buds and twigs. The mothers ate the bark from fresh sticks, and then hurried back to carry milk to the new baby beavers, asleep on their soft beds at home.