fuss is about.  You ought to be ashamed of yourself, acting that way about a wretched squirrel!’ Of course, she may not have said all that.  But she certainly gave all the other crows the impression that there was nothing wrong about her nest, and that they had better go and look after their own.  Thereupon they all said sarcastic things to their fellow citizen and left him indignantly.  He, poor fellow, found it impossible to explain or justify himself, because his mate was sitting on the eggs; so he flew off in a huff to try and find a sparrow’s nest to rob.  When he came back he had taken pains to forget just how many eggs there had ever been in the nest.

“Oh, yes, I know there were still three.  Well, three or four days later a boy came up from the farmhouse and climbed the pine tree, He was not the kind of a boy that robs birds’ nests, but he was making a collection.  He wanted just one crow’s egg, and he had a theory that birds cannot count.  He liked crows—­in fact, on that farm no one was ever allowed to shoot crows or any other birds except the murderous duck hawk, and he felt that the crows owed him one egg, anyhow, in return for the protection they enjoyed on his father’s property.

“Now, you must not think he chose the pine tree because it was the easiest to climb,” went on Uncle Andy hurriedly, seeing in the Babe’s eyes that this point had to be cleared up at once.  “In fact, it was the hardest to climb.  Any one of the fir trees would have been easier, and they all had crows’ nests in them.  But the boy knew that he could not climb any of them without getting his clothes all over balsam, which would mean a lot of inconvenient explanations with his mother.  So he went up the pine tree, of course, and spared his mother’s feelings.

“The crows displayed no sense of gratitude whatever.  He might have eggs, of course, that boy, but not their eggs!  They flapped around him savagely, and made so much noise in his ears that he could not hear himself think.  But he kept his big straw hat pulled down well over his eyes, and paid no attention whatever to the indignant birds.  And because he was so quiet and positive about it, not one of them quite dared to actually touch him.  The mother bird hopped off the nest sullenly just as he was about to put his hand on her.  He took one egg, put it in his pocket, examined the nest with interest, and climbed down again.  Just as he was nearing the ground he broke the egg.  This, of course, made him feel not only sticky but somewhat embarrassed.  He saw that he might have some difficulty in explaining that pocket to his mother.  Even a great deal of balsam would have been better than that egg.  But he comforted himself with the thought that he would never have been able to blow it, anyhow, on account of its being so advanced.

“And that’s why there were only two young crows in that particular nest.