h eyes
of cold inquiry, as much as to say: 'Well, I'd like to know what all
this fuss is about. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, acting that
way about a wretched squirrel!' Of course, she may not have said all
that. But she certainly gave all the other crows the impression that
there was nothing wrong about _her_ nest, and that they had better go
and look after their own. Thereupon they all said sarcastic things to
their fellow citizen and left him indignantly. He, poor fellow, found
it impossible to explain or justify himself, because his mate was
sitting on the eggs; so he flew off in a huff to try and find a
sparrow's nest to rob. When he came back he had taken pains to forget
just how many eggs there had ever been in the nest.

"Oh, yes, I know there were still three. Well, three or four days
later a boy came up from the farmhouse and climbed the pine tree, He
was not the kind of a boy that robs birds' nests, but he was making a
collection. He wanted just one crow's egg, and he had a theory that
birds cannot count. He liked crows--in fact, on that farm no one was
ever allowed to shoot crows or any other birds except the murderous
duck hawk, and he felt that the crows owed him _one_ egg, anyhow, in
return for the protection they enjoyed on his father's property.

"Now, you must not think he chose the pine tree because it was the
easiest to climb," went on Uncle Andy hurriedly, seeing in the Babe's
eyes that this point had to be cleared up at once. "In fact, it was
the _hardest_ to climb. Any one of the fir trees would have been
easier, and they all had crows' nests in them. But the boy knew that
he could not climb any of them without getting his clothes all over
balsam, which would mean a lot of inconvenient explanations with his
mother. So he went up the pine tree, of course, and spared his
mother's feelings.

"The crows displayed no sense of gratitude whatever. He might have
eggs, of course, that boy, but not _their_ eggs! They flapped around
him savagely, and made so much noise in his ears that he could not hear
himself think. But he kept his big straw hat pulled down well over his
eyes, and paid no attention whatever to the indignant birds. And
because he was so quiet and positive about it, not one of them _quite_
dared to actually touch him. The mother bird hopped off the nest
sullenly just as he was about to put his hand on her. He took one egg,
put it in his pocket, examined the nest