STORY XXVI

TOODLE AND NOODLE PLAY FOOTBALL

It was quite cold and shivery one day when Toodle and Noodle Flat-tail, the little beaver boys, started for school. It was not quite as cold as the day they had skated on the ice, riding their sister Crackie on their tails, when they got away from the bear, who fell into the water, as I told you yesterday.

No, it was not quite as cold as that, but still it was very shivery, and as Toodle and Noodle hurried along, with their books tucked under their left forelegs, they put their paws in their pockets.

"There'll be lots of skating if this keeps on," said Noodle.

"Indeed there will," said his brother Toodle.

And the reason there was no skating just then was because there had been a little warm spell, and the ice on the beaver pond had melted, cracking all up, and was floating about in chunks, like little boats. But they were cold little boats, and the beavers did not like to swim among them.

Crackie was not going to school that day, as she had the sniffle-snuffles and her nose was all red and her eyes ached and filled with water, and she had to have a piece of red flannel around her throat. Oh, well, you know how it is when you have the sniffle-snuffles, don't you? So there's no use in me stopping any longer over that part. I may as well get on with the story.

"I wish it would snow," said Toodle, as he stumbled over a humpy place in the woods through which he and his brother were going just then to get to the school, which had been moved to a hollow stump, instead of being in the boat, as before.

Professor Rat, the principal, said it was getting too cold to have school in the boat any longer so he and the lady bug teacher, and the janitor, and the blackboards and the bell, all moved into the hollow stump—not the one where the bear lived, though. No, indeed! I guess not!

Of course the bell and blackboards didn't move themselves from the boat-school into the school stump. No, the janitor and Professor Rat did that, and the lady bug teacher looked on and said:

"Oh, dear! Isn't it dreadful hard work to move a school?"

"Why do you wish it to snow?" asked Noodle of Toodle, after a while.

"So we could go sleigh riding and build a snow house—"

"Oh, that's so! I forgot what fun we can have when it snows!" cried Noodle. "I was thinking that it would spoil the skating, but there isn't any to spoil now. Let's wish real hard that it would snow."

So the beaver boys wished as hard as they could, and looked up at the sky, hoping to see some of the white flakes sifting down. But they saw none.

"We'd better hurry," called Noodle. "There goes the first bell and we've got quite a long way to go yet!"

So the two little beaver boys hurried on and, just as they got to the bridge over the tiny little brook that sang a merry song in the summer, but which did not sing so merrily in winter, Toodle and Noodle heard some one saying:

"Hark! What's that?" whispered Noodle.

"I don't know," answered Toodle. "It sounded like—like—somebody!"

"Of course it was somebody," spoke Noodle. "But who? That's the question."

They stood on the little bridge over the small brook and once more they heard the voice saying, louder than before, this time:

"That's funny," said Toodle, looking at his brother, who was sitting down on his tail to rest himself. "Do you s'pose that could be the circus elephant? He used to like balloons."

"It doesn't sound like the elephant," answered Noodle. "Still, you never can tell—"

Then the voice, that seemed to come from under the bridge, interrupted the little beaver boy by saying:

"Oh, Toodle!" cried Noodle, "have you a cent? If you have let's buy this balloon!"

"But how do we know who is selling it, or where he is, or whether it's really a balloon or not?" asked Toodle, looking in his pocket to see if he still had the penny Grandpa Whackum had given him the night before.

"Well, we can look under the bridge;" said Noodle, "and find out. Any one who sells balloons—especially red ones—is sure to be kind and good. I'm going to take a look through the crack in the bridge. We have time before the last bell rings."

So Noodle peeked down through a crack in the bridge floor, and there sitting on a stone near the water was a little monkey-doodle boy, with one red balloon tied to a stick.

"Do you really want to sell that balloon for a penny?" asked Noodle. "We'll buy it from you if you do."

The monkey looked up and saw the beaver boys, and in an instant he had scrambled up on the bridge.

"It is my last balloon," said the monkey-doodle. "I am all sold out except this one, so I am going to let you have it for a penny. Circus time is past, and I want to go and take a long sleep. I don't need the balloon any more."

"Well, then, we'll take it," said Toodle, lifting the penny out of his pocket. "We can have fun flying it."

"Oh, I can tell you how to have more fun with it than that," said the monkey-doodle, as he got ready to go away down South where it is warm, for monkeys like it warm in the winter. "You can play football with that balloon, and football is a very nice game for cold weather. It warms you. You must get some leather and make a covering for the red balloon. Then, when you kick it, the balloon won't burst. Make a football of it, I say."

"I guess we will," agreed Toodle.

Well, the beaver boys went on to school, with their red balloon, and, in order that the teacher would not take it away from them in the class room, they tied it outside in a tree, the way Mary told her lamb to stay outside. But the lamb wouldn't stay outside, and neither would the red balloon-football.

A window happened to be open, and all of a sudden the ball blew into the school, though it was still tied to the string on the tree branch. All the animal children in the hollow-stump school laughed and so did the teacher.

"What are you going to do with it?" asked the lady bug of Toodle and Noodle, when they told her about their balloon, and when the window had been shut so it couldn't come in again.

"Make a football of it," answered Toodle.

"Only we have to cover it with leather," said Noodle, "so it won't break."

"Oh, I'll do that for you," said the lady bug teacher, who liked boys. So that night she took the red balloon home with her and she made a leather cover for it, bringing it back next morning. Oh, it was a fine football then!

"Let's have a game!" cried Johnnie Bushytail, the squirrel boy, as he gave the new football a kick that sent it away over the fence. It was so light you see—the football I mean, not the fence—that it flew all over.

"All right, we'll have some fun!" cried Toodle, and then he and Noodle and Billie Bushytail and Sammie Littletail and all the animal boys, including Munchie Trot, the pony, played football in the school yard until it was time to go in.

Now, though the boys didn't know it, there was hiding behind the fence the same old bear that had chased Toodle and Noodle and Crackie one day on the ice.

"I'll just wait until one of those animal boys comes near this hole in the fence," thought the bad bear, "then I'll grab him and have a nice lunch."

Well, Toodle was going to kick the football and Noodle got away over by the fence to grab it when it came down.

"Kick away!" called Noodle to Toodle.

"And now is my chance to get him," thought the bear. Toodle kicked the balloon-football as hard as he could and just as Noodle was going to get it, the bear made a grab for him. But all of a sudden, the wind blew the football off to one side, and instead of Noodle getting it, that football hit the bear on the nose. Smacko! Cracko!

The football was so light and fluffy that it tickled the bear and made him sneeze, and whenever a bear sneezes he can bite no one except his own tongue. That's what this bear did, and he was so angry that he gave three howls and part of another one, and then he ran home to his den where he belonged.

Then the football game went on until it was time to go into school and all the boy animals said they had had a fine time.

They thanked Toodle and Noodle for buying the balloon-football from the monkey-doodle and many times that winter, when it was not too cold, there were football games.

So no more just now, if you please, but in the next story, if the rocking chair doesn't step on the molasses jug's ear and make the popcorn balls cry to go to the moving pictures, I'll tell you about Crackie Flat-tail and Joie Kat.