"What'll we do then?" Noisy Jake asked.
"You see those hens," said Jasper. "I'm going to scream like Mr. Red-shouldered Hawk. And you'll laugh when the hens hurry their chicks out of the way.... If you want to, you may scream too—but not till after I have."
Noisy Jake agreed to Jasper's plan. And he quickly disappeared among the branches of the oak to which Jasper had sent him.
Then Jasper just had to stop and laugh to himself over the fright he was going to give the old hens. He was about to open his mouth to imitate the cry of Mr. Hawk[p. 42] when something happened that made him terrible angry.
"Kee-you! kee-you!" The fierce scream rang out over the farmyard. And immediately the mother-hens called to their children, with frantic clucks, to run for their lives into the chicken house.
Jasper Jay did not laugh at all over the way the chicks scurried out of sight.
"Noisy Jake has played a mean trick on me!" he said to himself. "He went and screamed before it was his turn!"
Since he didn't want to miss all the fun, Jasper let out a blood-curdling "Kee-you! kee-you!" himself, just to hurry the last hen under cover. But, somehow, he had to confess to himself—though he wouldn't have admitted it to anybody else—he had to confess that Noisy Jake's cry sounded far more like Mr. Hawk's than did his own.
Of course, that did not make Jasper feel any pleasanter. He wished he had not told Noisy Jake where he was going.