Blacky was puzzled. He didn't know what to make of that egg he had
stolen from Farmer Brown's henhouse. It wasn't like any egg he ever had
seen or even heard of. It was a beautiful-looking egg, and he had been
sure that it would taste as good, quite as good as it looked. Even now
he wasn't sure that if he could only taste it, it would be all that he
had hoped. But how could he taste it, when he couldn't break that shell?
He never had heard of such a shell. He doubted if anybody else ever had,
either. He had hammered at it with his stout bill until he was afraid
that he would break that, instead of the egg. The more he tried to break
into it and couldn't, the hungrier he grew, and the more certain that
nothing else in all the world could possibly taste so good. But the
Old Orchard was not the place for him to work on that egg. In the first
place, it was too near Farmer Brown's house. This made Blacky uneasy.
You see, he had something of a guilty conscience. Not that he felt at
all a sense of having done wrong. To his way of thinking, if he were
smart enough to get that egg, he had just as much right to it as any one
else, particularly Farmer Brown's boy. Yet he wasn't at all sure that
Farmer Brown's boy would look at the matter quite that way. In fact,
he had a feeling that Farmer Brown's boy would call him a thief if he
should be discovered with that egg. Then, too, there were too many sharp
eyes in the Old Orchard. He wanted to get away where he could be sure of
being alone. Then if he couldn't break that shell, no one would be
the wiser. So he picked up the egg and flew straight over to the Green
Forest, and this time he managed to get there without dropping it.
Now you would never suspect Blacky the Crow, he of the sharp wits and
crafty ways, of being amused by bright things, would you? But he is. In
fact, Blacky is quite like a little child in this matter. Anything that
is bright and shiny interests Blacky right away. If he finds anything of
this kind, he will take it away to a certain secret place, and there he
will admire it and play with it and finally hide it. If I didn't know
that it isn't so, because it couldn't possibly be so, I should think
that Blacky was some relation to certain small boys I know. Always their
pockets are filled with all sorts of useless odds and ends which they
have picked up here and there. Blacky has no pockets, so he keeps his
treasures of this kind in a secret hiding-place, a sort of treasure
storehouse. He visits this secretly every day, uncovers his treasures,
and gloats over them and plays with them, then carefully covers them up
again. First Blacky took this egg over near his home, and there he
once more tried and tried and tried to break the shell. But the shell
wouldn't break, not even when Blacky quite lost his temper and hammered
at it for all he was worth. Then he gave the thing up as a bad matter
and flew up to his favorite roost in the top of a tall pine-tree,
leaving the egg on the ground. But from where he sat on his favorite
roost in the tall pine-tree he could see that provoking egg, a little
spot of shining white. When a Jolly Little Sunbeam found it and rested
on it, it was so very bright and shiny that Blacky couldn't keep his
eyes off it.
Little by little he forgot that it was an egg. At least, he forgot that
he wanted to eat it. He began to find pleasure in just looking at it. It
might not satisfy his stomach, but it certainly was very satisfying to
his eyes. He forgot to think of it as a thing to eat, but began to think
of it wholly as a thing to look at and admire. He was glad he hadn't
been able to break that shell.
Once more he spread his black wings and flew down to the egg. He cocked
his head to one side and looked at it. He cocked his head to the other
side and looked at it. He walked all around it, chuckling and saying to
himself, “Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty and all mine, mine, mine, mine!
Pretty, pretty, and all mine!”
Than he craftily looked all about to make sure that no one was watching
him. Having made quite sure, he rolled the egg over and turned it around
and admired it to his heart's content. At last he picked it up and
carried it to his treasure-house and covered it over very carefully. And
there that china nest-egg, for that is what he had stolen, is still his
chief treasure to this day, and Blacky still sometimes wonders what kind
of a hen laid such a hard-shelled egg.
Blacky has had very many other adventures, but it would take another
book to tell about all of them. That would be hardly fair to some of the
other little people who also have had adventures and want them told to
you. One of these is a beautiful little fellow who lives in the Green
Forest, and so the next book will be Whitefoot the Wood Mouse.