"A cookie, a nice fat cookie, with a raisin in its centre," coaxed the girl.
The crow lifted the other foot and with much fluttering and complaining managed to get all the way around.
Mrs. Burke had brought in a plate of cookies. Erie took one and held it up, as an enticement to Croaker.
"Want it?" she asked. "Then come down and be a good crow."
Then it was that Croaker, gripping the glasses in one black claw, burst into a cry of joyful recognition.
Just at this juncture the shed door was nosed softly open and a striped, furry animal rolled into the room like a ball and, raising himself on his hind legs, took the cookie from Erie's hand.
"Ringdo, you old sweetheart!" cried the girl and, reaching for the big swamp-coon, gathered him into her arms.
Doctor Allworth, after one startled look at the ferocious-looking newcomer, had climbed upon the table and now gazed wildly at the strange sight of a golden haired girl holding to her bosom a wild animal which might be anything from a wolf to a grizzly, for aught he knew.
At the sound of the girl's voice the swamp coon had dropped the cookie, and as she swept him into her arms his slender red tongue darted forth to give the curling tress above her ear an affectionate caress. Ringdo recognized in Erie the playmate who used to romp with him and stray with him along spongy moss and clayey ditches.
At this particular moment Croaker, from whom attention had for the time being been diverted, came into evidence again. At first sight of his old enemy the crow had grown rigid with anger; his black neck-ruff had stood up like the feathers on an Indian warrior's head dress and into his beady eyes had sprung the fighting-fire. When Ringdo got possession of the cookie he raised his short wings and prepared to swoop, strike, and if luck held, swoop again. But when the coon dropped the cookie that he might show the girl who had come back to the old playground that he was glad Croaker promptly changed his mind. He swooped, but on the precious cookie instead of on Ringdo, and with the prize in his black beak and the glasses dangling from one black claw, he went out of the open window like a dark streak.