Mother Beaver sighed. "There is no use in borrowing trouble," she said. "We must just keep a sharp look-out, and get our work done quickly. I'm glad now that we made those extra holes in the bank, though it did seem rather unnecessary at the time."
"Those holes, my son," said Father Beaver, in answer to Phil's inquiry, "lead to the deep tunnels in which we take refuge when we are pursued by our enemies. There we are comparatively safe, but in the open country or in the woods, owing to our clumsy movements on land, we are at their mercy."
His voice was gloomy, and it made Phil sad to think that such gentle animals as beavers had enemies.
"If they catch you, do they swing you up high, and make you all sick and giddy?" he asked, with a vivid recollection of the terrors of the barn.
"Worse," said the Beaver, shortly. "The hunters trap and kill us for our valuable fur, and IT—the Wolverene—actually eats us! This is why we go to so much trouble to make our houses secure, so that when the frost has hardened the thick layer of mud which we place each fall over the thatch of stones and driftwood, neither teeth nor claws can penetrate the hard surface."
Mother Beaver had shuffled off to her young ones, who were making up for the short commons of the winter by eating all the green shoots that came in their way. Their father, settling himself comfortably in the shelter of a low bush, invited Phil to sit beside him and have a chat.
"You want to learn our ways," he said, looking at him indulgently. "They are easy to understand, for though we are more skilled in building, perhaps, than other creatures, it is chiefly for our industry that we are noted. Nature has taught us to think ahead and provide for the future. I suppose you know what 'thinking ahead' means?"
"Not ezzactly," said Phil honestly, with a longing look at the young Beavers. The smallest of them appeared to have rolled himself into a round ball, and Phil couldn't help thinking what first-rate bats the others' broad tails would make.
The Beaver drew back his wandering attention with a light flap of his tail.
"One thing at a time," he counselled. "If I take the trouble to talk to you, the least you can do is to listen…. About looking ahead. If you had 'looked ahead' and learnt your geography the other day, instead of making paper boats in preparation time, you would have known that a continent wasn't 'a piece of land surrounded by water' and they wouldn't have called you—"