"Not ezzactly," said Phil honestly, with a longing look at the young Beavers. The smallest of them appeared to have rolled himself into a round ball, and Phil couldn't help thinking what first-rate bats the others' broad tails would make. The Beaver drew back his wandering attention with a light flap of his tail. "One thing at a time," he counselled. "If I take the trouble to talk to you, the least you can do is to listen.... About looking ahead. If you had 'looked ahead' and learnt your geography the other day, instead of making paper boats in preparation time, you would have known that a continent wasn't 'a piece of land surrounded by water' and they wouldn't have called you--" "Don't say it!" Phil entreated, and Father Beaver laughed and changed the subject. "The Social Beavers to which we belong," he said, "live in small colonies, and work together for the general good. A certain number of us, whom hunters call 'the Idlers,' refuse to help at all, and are satisfied to live in tunnels instead of houses. These are usually sorry for their idleness when it is too late, for they are often captured by fur hunters, who know where to look for them, and easily dig them out. That is, if IT does not find them first." "IT?" questioned Phil, snuggling closer to Father Beaver and speaking in an awed whisper. "The Wolverene," he amended. "My wife cannot bear the sound of his name when she is weak from fasting, so we call him 'IT' at this time of the year. He carried off our eldest daughter last summer. She was proud and wilful, and would not stay by her mother's side.... She had a lovely tail." "Don't you think we should be settling in for the night?" asked Mother Beaver, bustling back to them with a delicate green bough, from which she had stripped the leaves, as a titbit for Phil. She was surprised to hear that he was not hungry, until he reminded her how early that afternoon a dapper Bee in a velvet coat had invited him to a feast of honey. The Queen of the Fairies might have envied him that meal, so exquisite were the flower-cups in which he found it. "Of course, if you prefer honey to fresh bark," she said disappointedly. To please her Phil nibbled one end of the bough, and found it very bitter. He was thankful when her thoughts were distracted to her young ones, whose coats had to be nicely smoothed before they went to bed. Ere long they were all curled up under the thorny branches of a wild brier. Phil crept in between them, and was soon asleep, while the two old Beavers watched in turn to see that all was well.