STORY XIV

TOODLE'S FIRE ENGINE

One day, in school where Toodle and Noodle Flat-tail, the beaver boys, went to learn their lessons, Sammie Littletail, the boy rabbit, seemed very much excited.

And it was not about his lessons, either, though Sammie was a very smart little school-rabbit. No, it was something else, and pretty soon old Mr. Water Rat, who taught the class, noticed that Sammie was not paying any attention to his school work. Instead of trying to find out how many apples there would be left if you took three potatoes from half a dozen carrots, Sammie was looking at something under his desk.

"Sammie Littletail, what have you there?" asked Mr. Rat, after a bit.

"A water-pistol, if you please, sir," said the rabbit boy, very politely.

"Humph!" exclaimed Mr. Rat. "A school is no place for water-pistols. You may bring it here, Sammie, and then you had better study your lessons."

So Sammie had to bring his water-pistol up to the teacher's desk, and Toodle and Noodle Flat-tail, and all the other animal boys and girls, looked on. And Sammie got all red around his ears, he was so ashamed like.

"Oh, dear!" thought Toodle Flat-tail the beaver boy, as Sammie gave up the toy, "a real water-pistol. It's too bad teacher has it, for he won't know how to have fun with it. I wish Sammie hadn't taken it out; and maybe he'd have let me play with it after school. But now it's gone and the teacher won't give it back until vacation. Oh, dear!"

Sammie, himself, felt badly about his water-pistol, too. But then he knew he should not have taken it out in school. And so the lessons went on.

"Where did you get the water-pistol, Sammie?" asked Toodle Flat-tail of the boy rabbit, at recess.

"Uncle Wiggily Longears gave it to me," said Sammie. "It was a fine one, too. There was a rubber ball on it, and when you squeezed the ball and put the small end of the pistol in the water it sucked up a lot of it. Then, when you squeezed the rubber ball again, the water would shoot out like anything. But now it can't, 'cause Professor Rat has my water-pistol."

"Yes, it's surely too bad!" said Toodle. "I've been saving up for one a long time, but I haven't got my water-pistol yet."

All the animal boys talked about how unlucky it was for Sammie's pistol to be taken away from him, and they all said they thought maybe if Sammie asked Mr. Rat, the teacher, he would give it back.

So Sammie did, after school, and Mr. Rat, being a very kind animal gentleman, said:

"Well, Sammie, if you promise not to bring the water-pistol to school again you may have it back."

Of course Sammie promised, and then he had his toy again. He let all the animal boys take turns squirting it, and when it came to Toodle Flat-tail, the little beaver chap said:

"What'll you sell this water-pistol for, Sammie? I'll give you my new pop gun, and the birch bark whistle I made."

"All right," answered Sammie. "I'll trade you. I'm getting tired of my water-pistol, anyhow."

So that's how Toodle got the water-squirting-pistol that he wanted so very much, and he had a lot of fun with it. But he was very careful not to bring it to school with him, for he did not want Mr. Rat to take it away. Toodle and Noodle played with it around the house, and the best part of it was that their mamma didn't mind how much water they squirted, for beavers live in the pond, you know, and they are wet more than half the time. Only the upper part of their house is out of the pond, and to get in through the front door you have to dive down under water. Isn't that odd?

Well, Toodle and Noodle had a lot of fun with the water-pistol, and Toodle let his sister Crackie shoot it once or twice. She was careful not to let it fall, I'm glad to say, so that it did not get broken.

"Let's play a game with it," said Noodle after a bit. "I'll make believe I'm a funny old sea lion who comes to your house while you're asleep, to try and get in. And you must wake up, and pretend to be scared, and shoot at me with the water-pistol."

"I will!" cried Toodle, and the two beaver brothers had lots of fun playing that game.

And now something is going to happen. I wish I didn't have to tell about it, but I do, for I have promised that I wouldn't leave anything out of these stories, so I have to put the bad part in with the good. But I'll make it come out as nicely as I can at the end.

A few days after Toodle had got the water-pistol from Sammie Littletail, Noodle Flat-tail found some old firecrackers that had been left over from the Fourth of July. They had fallen down a crack in the floor, and there they had been hiding ever since. Firecrackers always like to sleep in cracks you know.

"Oh, goodie!" cried Noodle. "Come on, Toodle. We'll fire them off and have a lot of fun. We'll make believe having a war, and shooting, and all that."

Mrs. Flat-tail didn't happen to be home just then, or I think she would not have let the boys take matches and start to shoot the firecrackers. Toodle and Noodle didn't mean to do wrong, but you know how it is yourself, sometimes.

So they shot off the old firecrackers, and some of them made a loud noise. It grew dark before the beaver boys had finished, and the sparks from the crackers looked quite pretty.

Then Mr. Flat-tail came home and heard, and saw, what the boys were doing. He said:

"Oh, Toodle and Noodle, you must stop this at once! You might set the house on fire!"

"Well, if we did, I could put it out with my water-pistol," Toodle said with a laugh.

"But, anyhow, we haven't any more firecrackers left," said Noodle.

"I'm glad of it," spoke his father.

And that night, when Toodle went to bed he put his water-pistol, all filled with a lot of ice water, right near him on a chair.

"For," he said, "maybe the bad old fox might try to get in tonight, and, if he did, I could squirt water in his eyes, and scare him."

But something else happened. I guess it was worse than a fox, for, all of a sudden, when it was all dark and quiet, and the beavers were asleep, Grandpa Whackum, the oldest beaver of them all, awakened, and cried out:

"Fire! Fire! Fire! I smell smoke. The house is on fire!"

That woke everybody else up, of course, and such a running around as there was! Surely enough the beaver house—that is, the dry top part that was out of water—was on fire, and it smelled like firecrackers, too. You know how they smell.

"Oh, dear!" cried Mr. Flat-tail. "That's how it happened. Some of the fire-cracker sparks got under the roof, and they glowed and smoked until they have set fire to our house. Oh boys!"

Of course Noodle and Toodle felt very badly about this, even though they had not meant to do it.

"Come, hurry out everybody!" cried Grandpa Whackum, and he helped Mrs. Flat-tail and little Crackie to get out. The fire was quite hot now, and a lot of the other beavers woke up.

"Call the fire engines!" some one cried.

"No—don't do that!" suddenly shouted Toodle. "I have a little fire engine of my own. My water-pistol! I'll put out the fire with that." He had taken it with him when he rushed from the burning house, and now he began to squirt the water on the blaze—the water in his pistol. My how Toodle did squirt his water-pistol! And in a few minutes the fire was out, the house was not burned much and the beavers could go back in it.

So that's how Toodle and Noodle accidentally set fire to the house and how Toodle put it out with his water-pistol, which was as good as a fire engine, wasn't it?

And in the next story, if the door bell doesn't knock all the salt out of the pepper caster, and make the window get a pain in its toothache, I'll tell you about Toodle and Noodle helping Billie Bushytail.