Old Mr. Crow had decided that he would not fly south to spend the winter. He said he was getting almost too old for such a long journey. And he remembered, too, that he had heard the weather was going to be mild that winter.
"There's just one thing that worries me," he told Aunt Polly Woodchuck one day, when he was talking the matter over with her. "I don't know what I shall have to eat."
"Why, you can sleep until spring, just as I do," Aunt Polly said. "Then you won't want anything to eat."
But Mr. Crow said he was a light sleeper and that he could no more sleep the whole winter long than Aunt Polly could fly.
"Then why don't you store up some corn, the way the squirrels do?" she asked him. There was one thing about Aunt Polly—she always had a remedy for everything.
"That's a good idea!" Mr. Crow told her. "Maybe I can get somebody to help me, too."
And that very day he went to Sandy Chipmunk and asked him if he didn't want to gather some food for him.
"How much will you pay me?" Sandy asked him.
"I'll give you half what you gather for me," said Mr. Crow. "And that's certainly fair, I'm sure. It's often done. And it's called 'working at the halves.'"
It seemed fair to Sandy Chipmunk, too.