“So it depends on what kind of a bird, eh, what?” said he, deftly turning the point.  Then he scratched a sputtering sulphur match on the long-suffering leg of his trousers.

“Yes,” said the Babe, with more decision now.  “I’d like to be a crow.”

Uncle Andy smoked meditatively for several minutes before replying, till the Babe began to grow less confident as to the wisdom of his choice.  But as he gazed up at those green pine-tops, so clear against the blue, all astir with black wings and gay, excited ca-ings, he took courage again.  Certainly those crows, at least, were enjoying themselves immensely.

And he had always had a longing to be able to play in the tops of the trees.

“Well,” said Uncle Andy at last, “perhaps you’re not so very far off, this time.  If I couldn’t be an eagle, or a hawk, or a wild goose, or one of those big-horned owls that we hear every night, or a humming-bird, then I’d rather be a crow than most.  A crow has got enemies, of course, but then he’s got brains, so that he knows how to make a fool of most of his enemies.  And he certainly does manage to get a lot of fun out of life, taking it all in all, except when the owl comes gliding around his roosting places in the black nights, or an extra bitter midwinter frost catches him after a rainy thaw.”

He paused and drew hard on his pipe, with that far-away look in his eyes which the Babe had learned to regard as the forerunner to a story.  There were some interesting questions to ask, of course; but though bursting with curiosity as to why anyone should find it better to be a wild goose, or even a hummingbird, than a crow, the Babe sternly repressed himself.  He would ask those questions by and by, that he promised himself.  But he had learned that to speak inopportunely was sometimes to make Uncle Andy change his mind and shut up like an oyster.  He was determined that he would not open his mouth till the story should be well under way, till his uncle should be himself too much interested to be willing to stop.  And then, to his horror, just as he was recording this sagacious resolution in his mind, he heard himself demanding: 

“But why after a rainy thaw?”

It was out before he could choke it back.  There was nothing for him to do but stick to it and gaze at his uncle with disarming innocence.  Uncle Andy turned upon him a glance of slow contumely.

“If you were going to be caught out in a blizzard, would you rather be in dry clothes or in wet ones?” he inquired.

The Babe smiled apologetically and resumed his study of the agitated pine-tops, whence, from time to time, a crow, or two or three, would burst forth for a brief, whirling flight, as if to show how it was done.  Then other flights were made, which seemed to the Babe extremely brief and hesitating, as if the flyers were nervous when they found themselves out clear of the branches and suspended on their own wings over