“Oh, he’s gone!” cried Millie, when she saw the beaver disappear. “I wish I could have him to take home! Maybe I’ll see him again! Anyhow, he was nice to shove my skate out to me!”
Millie sat down on the bank and began putting on the skate that had slipped off, causing her to fall. And, though she never guessed it, she was to see Toto again, and the beaver was to see how Millie and her grandmother were made happy.
“Well, Toto, where have you been?” asked his mother, when, some little time later, the beaver boy swam up to the front door of the stick house. “I’ve been looking all over for you!”
“I didn’t mean to stay away so long, Mother,” answered Toto, in beaver talk, of course. “But it was so slippery on the ice that, when I got to going, it was hard to stop. I tried to eat some bark, but it was full of stickers, and then I had an adventure.”
“What’s an adventure?” asked Sniffy, who was not quite so bold and daring as was Toto.
“It’s something that happens to you,” Toto answered.
“And what happened to you?” asked Mr. Beaver.
Toto told them about Millie’s skate coming off, though of course he did not call it a skate. He said it was a “trap.”
“You did well to hurry away,” said his father. “It’s lucky for you that you fell through the hole in the ice and could swim. Always, when you are in danger, get in the water if you can. Very few animals can swim as fast as we beavers swim. The water is the place for us, even though we have to go on land to gnaw down the trees for the dams we make.”
“Why do we have to make dams?” asked Sniffy.