“Why, certainly!” Jasper Jay replied.
“I’m glad to oblige you, I’m sure.
And I promise that I’ll never, never, never again
mention your name aloud, Cousin Jim.”
There! The secret is out! Jasper Jay said
Mr. Crow’s name without once thinking what he
was about. And Mr. Crow was so angry that he gave
his cousin a sound beating, on the spot.
“I’ll teach you,” he said, “to
do as you’re told!” And he did. For
after that Jasper Jay always remembered that to him,
as to everybody else, his big black cousin must be
known only as “Mr. Crow.”
You see, “Jim Crow” was a name that Mr.
Crow could not abide. The mere sound of it made
him wince. And he was not a person of tender feelings,
either.
THE GIANT SCARECROW
Farmer Green always claimed that Mr. Crow was a ruffian
and a robber.
“That old chap has been coming here every summer
for years,” he said to his son Johnnie one day.
“I always know him when I see him, because he’s
the biggest of all the crows that steal my corn.”
That was Farmer Green’s way of looking at a
certain matter. But old Mr. Crow regarded it
otherwise. He knew well enough what Farmer Green
thought of his trick of digging up the newly planted
corn. And his own idea and Farmer Green’s
did not agree at all.
Now, this matter was something that old Mr. Crow never
mentioned unless somebody else spoke of it first.
And then Mr. Crow would shake his head slowly, and
sigh, and say:
“It’s strange that Farmer Green doesn’t
understand how much I help him. I’m as
busy as I can be all summer long, destroying insects
that injure his crops. And since I help Farmer
Green to raise his corn, I’m sure I have as
good a right to a share of it as the horses that plough
the field, or the men that hoe it. Farmer Green
gives them corn to eat. But he never once thinks
of giving me any.”
You see, there are always two sides to every question.
And that was Mr. Crow’s. But Farmer Green
never knew how Mr. Crow felt about the matter.
And every spring, at corn-planting time, he used to
set up scarecrows in his cornfield, hoping that they
would frighten the crows away.
And so they did. At least, some of the younger
crows were afraid of those straw-stuffed dummies,
with their hats tipped over their faces, or upon one
side, and their empty sleeves flapping in the winds
that swept through the valley. But old Mr. Crow
was too wise to be fooled so easily. He would
scratch up the corn at the very feet of a scarecrow—and
chuckle at the same time.
It must not be supposed that Farmer Green did not
know what was going on. He often caught sight
of Mr. Crow in the cornfield. But it always happened
that Mr. Crow saw him too. And Farmer Green could
never get near the old rogue.
At last Johnnie Green’s father spent a whole
evening trying to think of some way in which to outwit
Mr. Crow. And by bedtime he had hit upon a plan
that he liked.
