bang! smash! crash! splash! the thunder roared and the lightning went scuttling and dodging across the sky as though it wanted a place of its own to hide and couldn’t find one. chaik jay woke up in the black dark and looked around. for a minute he couldn’t think where he was. he could hear the wind howling, but the stick he perched on didn’t move in it and his feathers didn’t ruffle. he could hear the rain pounding and not a single drop fell on him. he was perfectly comfortable, only he felt just a little scared and lonely, though he was still too sleepy to think why.
pretty soon he heard a whistle. then he knew just where he was. that was louie whistling to let tad coon know he had left some corn by the cellar door for him.
i tell you chaik was glad to know louie was right there, almost beside him. he began to call and flutter his wings. “there, there, jay bird,” said the little boy in his very nicest voice, “i won’t forget you. are you ready to eat again?” he rattled some seeds on the floor of chaik’s cage. but chaik went on fluttering. it wasn’t food he wanted, it was company. if he couldn’t have tad coon (tad was still eating the rat) then louie’s nice warm finger was the next best thing. louie didn’t particularly like staying down there in the dark; it was nicer in the bright, warm kitchen. besides, now he’d told his father about chaik jay he thought maybe he’d like to see the handsome bird. maybe he’d make friends like he did with tad coon.
in about one minute chaik was blinking in the light of the kitchen lamp. it was really very much like the lantern louie had for his feast down by doctor muskrat’s pond, only there weren’t nearly so many beetles flying around it. that was because the screen kept them out, but chaik didn’t know about screens. he had to leave louie’s finger to catch that first beetle.
“i guess you couldn’t see to eat down there in the dark,” apologized the thoughtful boy, so he sprinkled some food on the table.
“land o’ love, what’s that bird doing now?” chaik looked up, but it was just louie’s mother talking, and he didn’t mind her a bit. he went right on doing it. he wasn’t swallowing his corn whole. he was neatly turning back its shiny jacket and picking the little sweet heart out of each kernel. i tell you he was making a fine mess of that table—but who cared? not louie or his mother; they thought he was too smart for anything.
pick, peck, pick! every once in a while he would give a shake of his head and scatter his little pile of grain so he could see the ones he hadn’t picked over yet. louie and his mother were just giggling over his antics; but he didn’t care.
puff! the kitchen door opened and let in a great gust of wind. it caught chaik from behind; it spread out his tail like a turkey-feather fan and sent him skating and sliding because the table was covered with slippery oilcloth, and his claws wouldn’t catch. but the door closed right away and the wind was shut out again. louie’s father had just come in.
chaik wasn’t scared—he was cross, he thought they’d played a joke on him. he balanced himself on his feet and then he gave a big shake to settle his feathers. he looked around very severely, as much as to say, “don’t you dare do that again. i won’t stand it!” then he marched into a little shady corner on the window sill, behind the curtain, and sulked.
he sulked! that’s exactly what he was doing. but nobody paid any attention to him at all—which is the right way to treat any one who does such a foolish thing. louie’s father sat down and opened up the evening paper. it made a fine crackling. louie’s mother stirred up some yeast (it smelled like mushrooms) into the bread she was going to bake next morning. then she began flouring the raisins she was going to put in it. chaik began to get so interested in what was going on he forgot he was sulking.
first he peeked out from behind the curtain. then he clawed his way sidewise across to the plate where the raisins were. pretty soon he made a dive with his sharp beak; he did it so quickly she didn’t see what he was up to. fine! chaik liked that raisin. but he didn’t like it quite so dusty. he picked up another one, but he didn’t gulp it in such a hurry. he bounced it on the table to shake the flour off it again.
louie started to laugh. “shh!” whispered his mother. “let’s see what he’s going to do next.” and what do you think that was? he began storing them away in his nice dark corner so he’d have some left for breakfast in the morning. he tucked a whole row of them into the crack of the window so neatly you could hardly see them. he began to find out that living with house-folks is really great fun.
all the time chaik was hiding the raisins louie and his mother were ’most bursting their buttons laughing at him. louie’s father had picked up the paper while chaik was sulking. and he dozed off in his chair with the paper in front of him all the time chaik was stealing.
when his wife thought chaik had enough for two birds, she whisked the plate away. he couldn’t think where it had gone to, because she did it when his tail feathers were turned. so he had to look for something else; he began trying experiments with the newspaper, pick, peck, picking, to see if he couldn’t get a taste of those little black specks. he didn’t know it was printing, of course; he thought those nice even lines were cracks and the little black specks were very neatly tucked in—so neatly it would be great fun to pick them out again. pretty soon he got excited and used his claws. the paper began tearing; that woke up mr. thomson.
slam went the paper on the table; that sent chaik fluttering, but in a minute he was back at it again busier than ever. and when the big man saw him he burst out laughing—and he didn’t laugh very often. he laughed so hard chaik scuttled back into his corner with his crest tucked down.
but as soon as mr. thomson picked up his paper again chaik began to cock his head. “eh?” he thought. “he’s hiding, too. he’s hiding from me!” wasn’t he just conceited? out he sneaked. pick, peck, pick—he tore off the whole corner that time. then he got his claws in it and danced around like a cat on a sheet of flypaper. that man reached out his finger, carefully as he could, and held it down so chaik could untangle his feet.
chaik misunderstood. “you needn’t be afraid,” said he in his politest bird talk. “i won’t peck you.”
mr. thomson misunderstood, too. he said: “the nerve of that bird! he isn’t a bit afraid of me.” so of course from that very minute they began to be friends—the first friend louie’s father ever had among the woodsfolk.
i don’t s’pose you could guess who had the most fun that evening. it wasn’t chaik—but he’d have insisted it was if any one had asked him. didn’t he just have a lovely time? he found all sorts of interesting things. he rather wanted to hide some of them away so he could play with them again, but there weren’t so many good places to hide them. take that little shiny cup for instance. it reminded him very much of an acorn with the top gone. you know what that was—it was a thimble. “too bad it’s empty,” he sighed. “now i wonder where house-folk keep their acorns—they must have a hole for them.” no jay could go housekeeping without one. but of course he couldn’t find it.
he thought of burying his treasure in the earth beneath one of the geraniums in a row of pots on the window sill. just then he discovered the coffee pot; louie’s mother was measuring the coffee into it for the morning, so its lid was open. chaik was so pleased. he dropped his shiny acorn right in. snap! shut the top. it wouldn’t come out again.
didn’t he just make an awful fuss? he hopped all around it. he sat on the handle and he tried to sit on the little round button on the lid, but his feet kept slipping off. he tried to peek down the spout or to reach his beak in. finally he got so cross he gave the stubborn old thing a peck. it made such a tinny sound he jumped away and perked up his crest at it. he’d just about decided that was a lost acorn when somebody got it out for him.
whoever do you think it was? it wasn’t louie, and it wasn’t his mother —it was mr. thomson! and it wasn’t just because he and chaik had made friends; it was because everything that foolish bird tried to do set the big man laughing. and then chaik would stop and look very hard at him as though he thought louie’s father were trying to talk to him, so of course he had to pay attention. that’s manners in a boy or a bird.
he let chaik peck a lead pencil into splinters to see what he could find, because that ignorant bird thought the lead was a worm-hole. he let him peck the button out of a chair cushion, just because it was fun to pull at. and when chaik came tumbling off the table to pull at the shiny tag on the end of his shoe lace—you’d have thought he really believed he was being helped by that impudent bird. he grumbled a lot more than louie when louie’s mother wound up the clock and made them all go to bed.
