“I might ask you the same question,” Sandy
answered.
“You followed me—that’s what
you did!” Mr. Crow exclaimed. “Of
all the prying busybodies I know, you are certainly
the worst. This is not your field; and I shall
have to ask you to leave it at once.”
“Oh! I’ll leave the field,”
said Sandy Chipmunk. “I don’t want
the field. You can have that. All
I want is some of the corn. There ought to be
enough for both of us.”
Mr. Crow muttered something about impertinence,
which Sandy Chipmunk didn’t understand.
Then Mr. Crow said:
“This corn belongs to Farmer Green. Just
because I’ve come to help him, and because I’ve
scratched up a few of the kernels to see if he’s
planting them properly, you seem to think I’m
eating corn.”
“I certainly do,” said Sandy Chipmunk.
“Well, what an idea!” Mr. Crow exclaimed.
Strange as it may seem, Farmer Green had the same
idea that Sandy
Chipmunk had. He happened to catch sight of old
Mr. Crow. And pretty soon
Johnnie Green came hurrying up the field, along the
fence. He hoped Mr.
Crow wouldn’t see him.
But old Mr. Crow generally saw any one coming his
way—especially if the person happened to
have a gun on his shoulder.
“I’ve important business over in the woods,”
he told Sandy Chipmunk suddenly. And he flew
off in great haste.
So Sandy stayed and ate all the corn he wanted.
He was so small and so nearly the same color as the
ploughed field that Johnnie Green never saw him at
all.
After that Mr. Crow would scarcely speak to Sandy
for several days. He said that Sandy was a nuisance.
“A person can’t go anywhere without that
Chipmunk boy following him,” Mr. Crow complained.
“You know, I’m helping Farmer Green plant
his corn. And Sandy Chipmunk followed me to the
corn-patch. And what do you think? He actually
began to eat the corn! Now, who ever heard
of such a thing?”
But Mr. Crow fooled nobody but himself. Every
one knew that he ate more of Farmer Green’s
corn than anybody else unless it was Farmer Green.
And he always waited until it was ripe.
The trouble with Mr. Crow was this: He didn’t
want any one but himself to visit the cornfield.
He wanted all the corn for an old gentleman known as
Mr. Crow.
SANDY LIKES MILK
Sandy Chipmunk liked milk. He never knew it,
though, until he chanced to come upon a saucerful
which some one had set out on the big flat stone that
served as the back doorstep of the farmhouse.
Sandy crept up and sniffed at the white liquid in
the saucer. It smelled very good. So he
tasted it. And it tasted so much better, even,
than it smelled that he drank every drop of it.
Sandy was sitting on the big stone step, washing his
face, when Farmer Green’s cat leaped out of
the doorway.
