One was a tinkly sound, a sound Toto remembered to have heard when in summer a farmer was hoeing corn in a field near the river, and his hoe struck on a stone in the dirt. Then came the noise of a thud, as if something heavy had fallen on the ice. And after that sounded the voice of a little girl saying:
“Oh dear! There goes my skate!”
Of course Toto did not understand man, girl, or boy talk. But he knew what it was, for in the summer, as he played around his stick-home in the river, he had often heard the farmer and his hired men talking in the fields not far away. So, though Toto did not know what the little girl said, he knew it was the same sound the farmer and his men had made when they talked to one another. And Toto was afraid of men, and boys and girls, too, though I don’t believe any girl would have tried to hurt or catch the beaver, nice as is their fur.
But this particular little girl, whose name was Millie Watson, did not even know Toto was near her. She had been skating on the ice when one of her skates suddenly came off, and she fell down.
The tinkly sound the beaver heard was the loose steel skate sliding over the ice and striking a stone near the bush under which Toto was hidden. The thudding sound was that made by Millie when she fell. But she was not hurt.
“Oh, dear!” she said again. “I wonder where my skate slid to. I can’t get along on only one skate, and it’s slow walking on the ice. Where is it?”
She slowly arose to her feet. One skate was still on her foot, but on the other shoe was only a loose strap. Millie, who had skated from her home to take a little pail of soup to her grandmother, who lived farther down the river, was on her way back when she lost her skate.
“I don’t see where it can be,” mused the little girl, looking here and there on the ice. The reason she could not see the skate was because it had slid under the edge of the overhanging berry bush.
“I hope she doesn’t see me!” thought Toto, as he crouched down under the twigs. “I wish it were summer, and there were leaves on this bush. I could hide better then, and the river wouldn’t be frozen, so I could swim away very fast if this girl comes after me. Dear me! I wonder what she is doing here, anyhow.”
Toto did not know much about skating. But as he peered out at the little girl he saw her pushing herself along on one foot, and on that foot was something long, thin and shiny. It sparkled in the sun, just as the blade of the farmer’s hoe sometimes sparkled.