“What’s the matter?” asked an old gentleman beaver, who came along just then. “Has Toto run away?”
“I don’t know that I’d call it exactly running away, Mr. Cuppy,” answered Mrs. Beaver. “I said he could go out of the house and play on the ice a little while, but I told him to come back and get his willow bark lunch. But he hasn’t come, so I walked out to call him.”
“And he doesn’t answer,” said Mr. Cuppy, the old beaver gentleman, with a laugh――of course he laughed animal fashion, and not as you do. “I guess Toto is off playing tag, or something like that, on the ice with the other beaver boys,” added Mr. Cuppy. “I’m going down the river to call on some friends of mine. If I see Toto I’ll tell him you want him.”
“I wish you would,” said Mrs. Beaver. “Please tell him to come straight home.”
“I will,” answered Mr. Cuppy, and then he got up from the ice, where he had sat down on his broad, flat tail to talk to Toto’s mother, and walked slowly down the ice-covered river which ran into Clearwater Lake.
That is, the river ran in summer time. In winter it was frozen over, though of course the water ran under the ice, where boys and girls could not see it. But Toto, Mr. Cuppy, and the other beavers could see it, for they could dive under the ice and swim in the water that flowed beneath it. In fact, they would rather swim in the water, cold as it was, than walk on the ice.
For a beaver can not very well walk on the ice――it is too slippery. Nor can a beaver walk very fast even on dry ground. But, my! how fast they can swim in water. So, though beavers very often come out on the land, or shore, they always run for the water, dive down, and swim away as soon as there is the least sign of danger.
Mrs. Beaver walked back toward the hole in the ice through which she intended getting into her house, where she lived with her husband, Mr. Beaver, Toto, and another little beaver boy named Sniffy.
Mrs. Beaver’s home looked just like a bundle of sticks from the woodpile, laid together criss-cross fashion. In fact, if you had seen it from the outside you would have said it was only a heap of rubbish.
This heap of sticks was built out near the middle of Winding River, which was not a very large stream. And now that the river was frozen, the pile of sticks, which made the beaver house, was heaped up above the frozen ice.