Bang! Smash! Crash! Splash! The thunder roared and the lightning went
scuttling and dodging across the sky as though it wanted a place of its
own to hide and couldn’t find one. Chaik Jay woke up in the black dark
and looked around. For a minute he couldn’t think where he was. He could
hear the wind howling, but the stick he perched on didn’t move in it and
his feathers didn’t ruffle. He could hear the rain pounding and not a
single drop fell on him. He was perfectly comfortable, only he felt just
a little scared and lonely, though he was still too sleepy to think why.
Pretty soon he heard a whistle. Then he knew just where he was. That was
Louie whistling to let Tad Coon know he had left some corn by the cellar
door for him.
I tell you Chaik was glad to know Louie was right there, almost beside
him. He began to call and flutter his wings. “There, there, jay bird,”
said the little boy in his very nicest voice, “I won’t forget you. Are
you ready to eat again?” He rattled some seeds on the floor of Chaik’s
cage. But Chaik went on fluttering. It wasn’t food he wanted, it was
company. If he couldn’t have Tad Coon (Tad was still eating the rat)
then Louie’s nice warm finger was the next best thing. Louie didn’t
particularly like staying down there in the dark; it was nicer in the
bright, warm kitchen. Besides, now he’d told his father about Chaik Jay
he thought maybe he’d like to see the handsome bird. Maybe he’d make
friends like he did with Tad Coon.
In about one minute Chaik was blinking in the light of the kitchen lamp.
It was really very much like the lantern Louie had for his feast down by
Doctor Muskrat’s pond, only there weren’t nearly so many beetles flying
around it. That was because the screen kept them out, but Chaik didn’t
know about screens. He had to leave Louie’s finger to catch that first
beetle.
“I guess you couldn’t see to eat down there in the dark,” apologized the
thoughtful boy, so he sprinkled some food on the table.
“Land o’ love, what’s that bird doing now?” Chaik looked up, but it was
just Louie’s mother talking, and he didn’t mind her a bit. He went right
on doing it. He wasn’t swallowing his corn whole. He was neatly turning
back its shiny jacket and picking the little sweet heart out of each
kernel. I tell you he was making a fine mess of that table--but who
cared? Not Louie or his mother; they thought he was too smart for
anything.
[Illustration: Chaik begins to find out that living with house-folks
is really great fun.]
Pick, peck, pick! Every once in a while he would give a shake of his
head and scatter his little pile of grain so he could see the ones he
hadn’t picked over yet. Louie and his mother were just giggling over his
antics; but he didn’t care.
Puff! The kitchen door opened and let in a great gust of wind. It caught
Chaik from behind; it spread out his tail like a turkey-feather fan and
sent him skating and sliding because the table was covered with slippery
oilcloth, and his claws wouldn’t catch. But the door closed right away
and the wind was shut out again. Louie’s father had just come in.
Chaik wasn’t scared--he was cross, he thought they’d played a joke on
him. He balanced himself on his feet and then he gave a big shake to
settle his feathers. He looked around very severely, as much as to say,
“Don’t you dare do that again. I won’t stand it!” Then he marched into a
little shady corner on the window sill, behind the curtain, and sulked.
He sulked! That’s exactly what he was doing. But nobody paid any
attention to him at all--which is the right way to treat any one who does
such a foolish thing. Louie’s father sat down and opened up the evening
paper. It made a fine crackling. Louie’s mother stirred up some yeast
(it smelled like mushrooms) into the bread she was going to bake next
morning. Then she began flouring the raisins she was going to put in it.
Chaik began to get so interested in what was going on he forgot he was
sulking.
First he peeked out from behind the curtain. Then he clawed his way
sidewise across to the plate where the raisins were. Pretty soon he made
a dive with his sharp beak; he did it so quickly she didn’t see what he
was up to. Fine! Chaik liked that raisin. But he didn’t like it quite so
dusty. He picked up another one, but he didn’t gulp it in such a hurry.
He bounced it on the table to shake the flour off it again.
Louie started to laugh. “Shh!” whispered his mother. “Let’s see what
he’s going to do next.” And what do you think that was? He began storing
them away in his nice dark corner so he’d have some left for breakfast
in the morning. He tucked a whole row of them into the crack of the
window so neatly you could hardly see them. He began to find out that
living with house-folks is really great fun.
All the time Chaik was hiding the raisins Louie and his mother were
’most bursting their buttons laughing at him. Louie’s father had picked
up the paper while Chaik was sulking. And he dozed off in his chair with
the paper in front of him all the time Chaik was stealing.
When his wife thought Chaik had enough for two birds, she whisked the
plate away. He couldn’t think where it had gone to, because she did it
when his tail feathers were turned. So he had to look for something
else; he began trying experiments with the newspaper, pick, peck,
picking, to see if he couldn’t get a taste of those little black specks.
He didn’t know it was printing, of course; he thought those nice even
lines were cracks and the little black specks were very neatly tucked
in--so neatly it would be great fun to pick them out again. Pretty soon
he got excited and used his claws. The paper began tearing; that woke up
Mr. Thomson.
Slam went the paper on the table; that sent Chaik fluttering, but in a
minute he was back at it again busier than ever. And when the big man
saw him he burst out laughing--and he didn’t laugh very often. He laughed
so hard Chaik scuttled back into his corner with his crest tucked down.
But as soon as Mr. Thomson picked up his paper again Chaik began to cock
his head. “Eh?” he thought. “He’s hiding, too. He’s hiding from me!”
Wasn’t he just conceited? Out he sneaked. Pick, peck, pick--he tore off
the whole corner that time. Then he got his claws in it and danced
around like a cat on a sheet of flypaper. That man reached out his
finger, carefully as he could, and held it down so Chaik could untangle
his feet.
Chaik misunderstood. “You needn’t be afraid,” said he in his politest
bird talk. “I won’t peck you.”
Mr. Thomson misunderstood, too. He said: “The nerve of that bird! He
isn’t a bit afraid of me.” So of course from that very minute they began
to be friends--the first friend Louie’s father ever had among the
Woodsfolk.
I don’t s’pose you could guess who had the most fun that evening. It
wasn’t Chaik--but he’d have insisted it was if any one had asked him.
Didn’t he just have a lovely time? He found all sorts of interesting
things. He rather wanted to hide some of them away so he could play with
them again, but there weren’t so many good places to hide them. Take
that little shiny cup for instance. It reminded him very much of an
acorn with the top gone. You know what that was--it was a thimble. “Too
bad it’s empty,” he sighed. “Now I wonder where house-folk keep their
acorns--they must have a hole for them.” No jay could go housekeeping
without one. But of course he couldn’t find it.
He thought of burying his treasure in the earth beneath one of the
geraniums in a row of pots on the window sill. Just then he discovered
the coffee pot; Louie’s mother was measuring the coffee into it for the
morning, so its lid was open. Chaik was so pleased. He dropped his shiny
acorn right in. Snap! shut the top. It wouldn’t come out again.
Didn’t he just make an awful fuss? He hopped all around it. He sat on
the handle and he tried to sit on the little round button on the lid,
but his feet kept slipping off. He tried to peek down the spout or to
reach his beak in. Finally he got so cross he gave the stubborn old
thing a peck. It made such a tinny sound he jumped away and perked up
his crest at it. He’d just about decided that was a lost acorn when
somebody got it out for him.
Whoever do you think it was? It wasn’t Louie, and it wasn’t his mother
--it was Mr. Thomson! And it wasn’t just because he and Chaik had made
friends; it was because everything that foolish bird tried to do set the
big man laughing. And then Chaik would stop and look very hard at him as
though he thought Louie’s father were trying to talk to him, so of
course he had to pay attention. That’s manners in a boy or a bird.
He let Chaik peck a lead pencil into splinters to see what he could
find, because that ignorant bird thought the lead was a worm-hole. He
let him peck the button out of a chair cushion, just because it was fun
to pull at. And when Chaik came tumbling off the table to pull at the
shiny tag on the end of his shoe lace--you’d have thought he really
believed he was being helped by that impudent bird. He grumbled a lot
more than Louie when Louie’s mother wound up the clock and made them all
go to bed.