Pretty soon Johnny Chuck backed out and sat up, and he looked very proud and important.  Then Sammy Jay saw something that nearly took his breath away.  It was the head of Polly Chuck peeping out of the doorway.  It was the first time that he had seen Polly Chuck.

“Why,” gasped Sammy Jay, “it must be that Johnny Chuck has a mate, and I didn’t know a thing about it!  So that’s his secret and the reason he has appeared so proud lately!”

Polly Chuck came out on the doorstep.  She looked just as proud as Johnny Chuck, and at the same time she seemed terribly anxious.  She sat up beside Johnny Chuck, and she looked this way and that way, just as Johnny had.  Then she put her head in at the doorway and began to call in the softest voice.

In a minute Sammy Jay saw something more.  It surprised him so that he nearly lost his balance.  It was another head peeping out of the doorway, a head just like Johnny Chuck’s, only it was a teeny-weeny one.  Then there was another and another!  Polly kept talking and talking in the softest voice, while Johnny Chuck swelled himself up until he looked as if he would burst with pride.

Sammy Jay understood now why Johnny Chuck had been so proud for the last few days.  It was because he had a family!  Sammy looked down at the three little Chucks sitting on the doorstep, trying to sit up the way Johnny Chuck sat, and they looked so funny that Sammy forgot himself and laughed right out loud.  In a flash the three little Chucks and Polly Chuck had disappeared inside the house, while Johnny Chuck looked up angrily.  He knew that his secret was a secret no longer.

XXI

SAMMY JAY HAS A CHANGE OF HEART

     There’s no one ever quite so bad
     That somewhere way down deep inside
     A little goodness does not find
     A place wherein to creep and hide.

It is so with Sammy Jay.  Yes, Sir, it is so with Sammy Jay.  You may think that because Sammy Jay is vain, a trouble-maker and a thief, he is all bad.  He isn’t.  There is some good in Sammy Jay, just as there is some good in everybody.  If there wasn’t, Old Mother Nature never, never would allow Sammy Jay to go his mischievous way through the Green Forest.  He dearly loves to get other people into all kinds of trouble, and this is one reason why nobody loves him.  But if you watch out sharp enough, you will find that hidden under that beautiful blue and white coat of his there really is some good.  You may have to look a long time for it, but sooner or later you will find it.  Johnny Chuck did.

Sammy Jay had already made a lot of trouble for Johnny Chuck.  You see he had been the first of the little forest and meadow people to find Johnny Chuck’s new house.  And then, just to make trouble for Johnny Chuck, he had told Reddy Fox about it, and after that he had called Bowser the Hound and Farmer Brown’s boy over to it.  Now he had discovered Johnny Chuck’s greatest secret—­that Johnny had a family.  What a chance to make trouble now!