STORY IX

TOODLE AND NOODLE SLIDE DOWN

Once upon a time Toodle and Noodle Flat-tail, the little beaver boys, went sliding down hill when there wasn't any snow on the ground, and a very strange thing happened to them. I'm going to tell you all about it, if you'd like to hear it. So, if you will kindly not wiggle too much, and not call the dog over here to rub his wet tail on my newly polished shoes and take all the shine off so I can't go to the party, I'll tell you all about it.

It began this way. Toodle said to Noodle, his brother, one day:

"Let's have some fun."

"All right," said Noodle to Toodle, "we will. What shall we do?"

"Let's go out on the dam and look around," said Toodle. "Maybe we'll see something there."

The dam, you know, was the big wall of sticks and stones, and grass and mud, that held the water of the beaver pond from running away and leaving all the beaver houses on dry land. Because the beaver animals, you know, like to have their houses in water.

"Shall we take Crackie with us?" asked Noodle. Crackie, you remember, was the new little baby sister of the beaver boys. They had found her in a hollow stump. "Shall we take Crackie?" asked Noodle.

"Why, yes, I guess so," answered Toodle. "She'd like to come and have some fun."

So they swam back to the beaver house, dived down under water where the front door was (so no bad animals could get in without at least getting wet) and then Noodle called:

"Hi there, Crackie! Want to come with us?"

"Of course I do," answered Crackie, and then something sounded "Bango!"

"My goodness! What is that?" cried Mrs. Flat-tail, mother of the beaver children. "What did you break that time, Crackie?"

"Only the looking glass. Oh, dear!" answered the little baby beaver. "It's all cracked to pieces."

"Oh, Crackie!" cried Toodle, sadly like.

That's the reason her name was "Crackie," as I told you in the story before this one. The poor little girl did not mean to do it, but she was always cracking or breaking something. Some people are like that; aren't they?

"I—I was just looking in the glass to see if my hair ribbon was on straight," said Crackie, "when the mirror just fell out of my claws and broke!"

Crackie was getting to be quite a girl, you see, to have hair ribbons and all things like that. Oh, beaver children grow very fast, you know. They are something like mushrooms that spring up over night.

"Well, never mind, Crackie, my dear," said Mrs. Flat-tail. "You couldn't help it, I know. You didn't do it on purpose. Run along out with the boys and play."

"Yes, come on, Crackie!" cried Toodle. "We're going to have some fun!"

Say, I guess, I'd better begin telling about that sliding down hill without any snow on the ground pretty soon, had I not? or else I'll get to the end of this story without putting it in.

Well, anyhow, as the telephone girl says sometimes, Toodle and Noodle and Crackie, the three beaver children, swam out of the house in the pond and began looking for something so that they might have a good time.

They looked over toward where Grandpa Whackum, the oldest beaver of them all, was showing another beaver gentleman, who had just gone to housekeeping, how to stop a leak in his roof. And the animal children saw their grandpa climb up on the roof with some plastermud in his paws to fix the hole, and then, when he had used up the plaster, they saw him slide down the roof for more, going splash! into the water.

"Say, that's what we can do to have some fun!" exclaimed Toodle.

"Do what?" asked Noodle.

"Slide down hill," answered Toodle.

"How can we slide down hill when there isn't any snow," asked Crackie, who was a very smart little beaver baby girl.

"I'll show you," said Toodle. "You know mud is very slippery, and the roofs of lots of our houses are made of mud. Grandpa Whackum just slid down one, sitting on his flat tail, and we can do the same."

"That's right," cried Noodle. "We'll find an old house, where no one lives any more, and we'll wet the roof by splashing water on it, and then we'll take turns sliding down into the pond. That will be jolly fun!"

Toodle thought so, too, and so did Crackie. She swam along with her brothers, carrying her rubber doll in one paw. The rubber doll didn't mind being wet, you know.

Well, finally the beaver children found a big house, that was rounding on top just like a hill, and no one lived in it. The roof was covered with dried mud, but with their tails Toodle and Noodle and Crackie soon splashed water on it and made it as slippery as the most slippy-ippy hill covered with snow or ice that you ever saw. For you know how sluppy-slippy wet mud is if you have ever fallen down in it when you were going to school. Or maybe your rubber has stuck in the slippery-sticky mud and come off. Mine did once, and I dropped my ice cream cone in a puddle of water, and the worst of it was I didn't have any more money to get another, either.

Well, finally the rounding, hilly top part of the roof of the beaver house was all wet and slippery mud, and Toodle and Noodle began to slide down it. They wanted to try it first before they let their little sister Crackie go on it, to be sure it was safe for her.

And it was all right, I'm glad to say, and when the beaver boys sat on their tails and gave themselves a little push away they went down the muddy hill, without any snow on it, almost as fast as a choo-choo train, or maybe even an automobile, for all I know. Think of that!

"Now may I try it?" asked Crackie.

"Yes, come along," said Toodle.

"We'll give you a good push!" said Noodle.

Crackie let her rubber doll swim in the water while she climbed up on top of the house-hill and got ready to slide down into the water. It was like shooting the chutes at Coney Island, you know.

"Splish-splash!" went Crackie into the water, and she laughed and shouted, it was such fun.

"She slides as well as we do, Noodle," said Toodle.

"Indeed she does!" said Noodle to Toodle.

Then the beaver children took more turns sliding down the muddy hill. Sometimes they slid separately, and often all three of them would go down together. Then Toodle got a long piece of birch bark for a sled, and they all sat on that, holding their tails up in the air, and down they went, whizzing along until they hit the water with a splash.

Oh, it was great fun!

Then, all of a sudden, when Toodle and Noodle had gone sliding down together, leaving Crackie standing alone on the top of the muddy hill, to come down after them, all of a sudden, up out of the water came the bad old skillery-scalery alligator, and before Toodle or Noodle knew what was happening the savage creature, with the double-jointed tail, had grabbed them both in his paws.

"Oh, let us go! Let us go!" cried Toodle.

"Yes, please let us go!" begged Noodle, and he tried to make his tail go "whack!" on the water, the way his grandpa had taught him to do to call for help. But the alligator held him too tightly, and Noodle couldn't move even his nose.

"Oh, will no one help us?" shouted Toodle.

"No, there is no one here to help you," barked the alligator, just like a dog. "I am going to take you off to my den!"

"Oh, ho! No, you're not!" cried little Crackie, up on top of the mud-hill, and with that she came sliding down so fast that she suddenly hit that alligator right on the end of his nose, and that made tears come into his eyes, and whenever that happens to a skillery-scalery alligator he has to go right away to the dentist. It was that way with this one, and, as soon as Crackie bumped him, he dropped Toodle and Noodle, letting them go, and away the bad creature swam to have a tooth pulled out, which served him right, I think.

So that's how Crackie saved Toodle and Noodle by sliding down the mud-hill and bumping the alligator. Then the beaver children had a lot more fun in the water and the alligator didn't bother them any more that day. And in the story after this, if the merry-go-round doesn't dance a jig on the roof, and wake up the little mouse in the pantry, I'll tell you about Toodle and Noodle going to school.