“I didn’t know what I was doing!” said his uncle.  “And I can’t possibly answer all those questions.  Why, I could never begin to remember half of them.”

“I can,” interposed the Babe.

“Oh, you needn’t mind,” said Uncle Andy, hastily.  “But perhaps, if you listen with great care, you may find answers to some of them in what I am going to tell you.  Of course, I don’t promise, for I don’t know what you asked me.  But maybe you’ll hear something that will throw some light on the subject.”

“Thank you very much,” said the Babe.

“There were only two young ones in the nest,” said Uncle Andy, in his sometimes irrelevant way, which seemed deliberately designed to make the Babe ask questions.  “The nest was a big, untidy structure of sticks and dead branches; but it was strongly woven for all its untidiness, because it had to stand against the great winds sweeping down over the Ridge.  Inside it was very nicely and softly lined with dry grass, and some horse-hair, and a piece of yellow silk from the lining of what had once been a ruffle or something like that that women wear.  The nest was in a tall pine, which stood at one end of a grove of ancient fir trees overlooking a slope of pasture and an old white farmhouse with a big garden behind it.  Nearly all the trees had crows’ nests in their tops, but in most of the other nests there were three or four young crows.”

As Uncle Andy paused again at this point the Babe, who was always polite, felt that he was really expected to ask a question here.  If he did not, it might look as if he were not taking an interest.  He would rather ask too many questions than run the risk of seeming inappreciative.

“Why were there only two young ones in the nest in the pine tree?” he inquired.

It was very hard to know sometimes just what would please Uncle Andy, and what wouldn’t.  But this time it was quite all right.

“Now, that’s a proper, sensible question,” said he.  “I was just coming to that.  You see, there ought to have been four youngsters in that nest, too, for there had been four greeny-blue, brown-spotted eggs to start with.  But even crows have their troubles.  And the pair that owned this particular nest were a somewhat original and erratic couple.  When the mother had laid her last egg and was getting ready to sit, she decided to take an airing before settling down to work.  Though her mate was not at hand to guard the nest, she flew off down to the farm to see if there was anything new going on among those foolish men, or perhaps to catch a mouse among the cornstalks.”

“Do crows eat mice?” demanded the Babe in astonishment.

“Of course they do,” answered Uncle Andy impatiently.  “Everybody that eats meat at all eats mice, except us human beings.  And in some parts of the world we, too, eat them, dipped in honey.”

“Oh—­h—­h!” shuddered the Babe.