Slicko had kept her word. She had gone back through the woods, and, reaching the beaver pond, she had told Cuppy and the others how she had seen Toto in a cage on the houseboat.
Mrs. Beaver and her husband and Sniffy wanted to go right away and rescue Toto, and they started with Cuppy and some of the others. For beavers are animals that help one another when they can. They are all like one big family. But the houseboat had gone down the river, and even Cuppy, wise old beaver that he was, could not find it.
“I guess Toto is gone forever,” sighed Mother Beaver. “Well, it is sad, but it can not be helped. I hope he has a happy home.”
And so, after a few days, Toto was almost forgotten by all who lived in the beaver pond. His mother and father did not forget him, though, even when they were busy gnawing down trees or working on the dam.
One day, about two weeks after he had been caught in the trap and put in the cage, Toto, still on the houseboat, saw, from the deck, that they were coming to a very wide part of the river. It was a stretch of water much larger than the beaver pond. And there were not so many trees near the river now.
“Are we going to stop at the big city, Dad?” asked Donald, the boy, of his father, as they stood on deck, looking around.
“Yes, I think we shall tie up there for a day or so,” was the answer. “I have painted some pictures of the woods, and I may sell them in the big city.”
“I like the city and I like the woods,” said the boy. “They are going to have a circus here at this city. I saw the pictures on the billboards. I want to see the elephants and the lions and the tigers.”
“The wild animals in the woods are better than those in a circus, my boy,” said the man. “But still if there were no circuses many people would never see a wild animal. We shall all go to the circus.”