of danger. Beavers, you know, are something
like big muskrats, and they like water. Their tails are flat, like a
pancake or egg turner.

"Well, how are things with you, and how is Nurse Jane?" asked Grandpa
Whackum.

"Oh, everything is fine," said Uncle Wiggily. "Nurse Jane is well.
I've just been to the store to get her some butter."

"That's just like you; always doing something for some one," said
Grandpa Whackum, pleased like.

Then the two friends talked for some little while longer, until it was
almost 6 o'clock, and time for Uncle Wiggily to go.

"I'll take my butter and travel along," he said. But when he went
outside, where he had left the pound of butter on a flat stump, it
wasn't there.

"Why, this is queer," said the bunny uncle. "I wonder if Nurse Jane
could have come along and taken it to the hollow stump bungalow
herself?"

"More likely a bad fox took the butter," spoke the old gentleman
beaver. "But we can soon tell. I'll look in the dirt around the stump
and see whose footprints are there. A fox makes different tracks from
a muskrat."

So Grandpa Whackum looked and he said:

"Why, this is queer. I can only see beaver tracks and rabbit tracks
near the stump. Only you and I were here and we didn't take anything."

"But where is my butter?" asked Uncle Wiggily.

Just then, off in the woods, near the beaver house, came the sound of
laughter and voices cailed:

"Oh, it's my turn now, Toodle."

"Yes, Noodle, and then it's mine. Oh, what fun we are having, aren't
we?"

"It's Toodle and Noodle--my two beaver grandsons," said Grandpa
Whackum. "I wonder if they could have taken your butter? Come; we'll
find out."

They went softly over behind a clump of bushes and there they saw
Toodle and Noodle sliding down the slanting log of a tree, that was
like a little hill, only there was no snow on it.

"Why, they're coasting!" cried Grandpa Whackum. "And how they can do
it without snow I don't see."

"But I see!" said Uncle Wiggily. "Those two little beaver boys have
taken my butter that I left outside of your house and with the butter
they have greased the slanting log until it is slippery as ice. That's
how they slide down--on Nurse Jane's butter."

"Oh, the little rascals!" cried Grandpa Whackum.

"Well, they didn't mean anything wrong," Uncle Wiggily kindly said.
Then he called; "Toodle! Noodle! Is any of my butter left?"

"Your butter?" cried Noodle, surprised like.