Benny and Bella were two beavers that lived in a cozy little lodge on the bank of a sparkling river. Each autumn, they would come out of their home and gnaw down the trees they had marked the spring before. They worked very hard each fall and, when winter and ice came, they had enough food to last them until spring.
One very fine morning in early autumn, Benny lay before his door and sunned himself. “I don’t feel quite right this morning,” sighed he. “My bones ache, my head is dizzy, and my stomach is out of order. I wish I were a little fish in the river, swimming here and there all day, instead of this tiresome work of cutting trees: Then I wouldn’t have to deal with Ludwig’s rough comments.”
Just at that moment, Bella came gliding under the wall of green vines that hung around the door with her sharp chisel in her mouth. She had just cut down a very small tree, which she placed on her shoulder to place it near a pile of wood on the opposite side of the lodge. It was rather heavy for Bella, who weighed but twenty pounds. When she came out again, Benny said to her, “Good-morning, dearest sister! Have you got a bad headache, also? Don’t the trees we gnaw at hurt you, sometimes? What work it is to make just one single notch in a tree after the other all day long!”
“Oh, you lazy fellow,” replied Bella. “Just try to do what I have done this morning. If that doesn’t cure your headache, it will show you how wrong your complaint is.” So saying, she began her work again with a song on her lips.
Benny lay and stared. “You foolish goose,” thought he. “My work is much more dangerous than yours, for I may break my leg and fall into the water anytime.” Then he turned around to bed and went to sleep.
Lying there, he had a strange dream in which a number of larger beavers came swimming down the river to kill him and tear his body limb from limb. Startled at the sight, he woke up and hurried to the water-bank to look around him. He was somewhat better before, but still wished he were a little fish, with no more trouble than to swim up and down all day long.
When Bella came out this time, she said, “Now, brother, it is your turn to do a little work. Come with me, and let us try to see who does the most work!”
With that, Benny took the hatchet and went with Bella. But instead of working with her, he lay on his stomach, holding the hatchet in his paw, and letting it sway a little from side to side, and from front to back, while he listened to her work. “Now it is your turn!” thought he. “You do all the work.”
So his sister went a little distance from him to not hear the sound of her own work to know when he imitated it. Benny, recovering soon his dream, became very industrious. When he had cut down twenty trees, he began to work with Bella. The trees, which he cut, she made into beams. Soon about half the dam was built, and the beavers had a fine swiming bowl there, where they could live in peace and quiet.
Now, in order that they might work well together, they bought a spelling-book of curious letters and took their coats and working-lamp to distant parts at the brook at night to spell words on the white shining rocks that appeared above water. By going this way, the currents did not tear away the earth faster than they could fill up the holes here.
At last when winter came with its cold breath and icy breath, the dam was quite built over a space of fifty yards above the lodge, which lay at the end of it. The dam looked as if it were all of iron, and the water more than ten feet deep beyond, so that the two beavers swam in it with the greatest delight.
One night Benny felt some fresh air on his foot. He woke up, and saw that a great piece of the dam was missing. He jumped into the water and soon was with Bella. She had done all she could, but four of their neighbors had joined up with them, and worked real hard the last two weeks, wielding their two hatchets as the wind did bows at the first day of the New Tear to warn them. Now it was to be had no longer.
Benny told his neighbor to attend to things until his return, and swam up the river, where a new company of beavers had lived the previous year. Two of them went with him. The earth was thawed from the intense animal heat in the wood, and so the work progressed very fast.
Bella lay in tears round the fireplace of her hut, where the flame from the wet wood made a fine roaring flame as the two new beavers came at last from their work. But soon Benny and the foreign beavers stood before her entrance, shaking the snow from their heads, back, and paws. With trembling hands Benny handed Bella the skins, saying: “See what your chisel hath done, dearest sister.”
Tears of joy streamed from her eyes while she grasped both the skins, which new in their turn were nothing else than a good warm cover for that end of the hut. Bella rubbed their paws on it and sucked her teeth into it.
At last she said: “Now that, dearest Benny!”
But he had come unexpectedly too close to the good hot fire, and before he was aware, had scorched off all the hair on the part of his body which extended above his eyes as far as the part of his nose which lay perpendicularly. So that only looked black and beautiful Yoko at present looked sad and ragged like no other animal.
Bell laughed, while she wrest with herself to pronounce the following words: “Watch your paws while they are hot!”
That was the answer to both.