Every now and then they would stop and listen, and often they heard the distant cawing of crows. But this was what happened every day in the woods. There were many crows.
“And they all sound alike when they caw,” said Ted.
“Yes, but Jim crow can pop corks, and no other crow can do that,” said Janet. “And he can stand on one leg in such a funny way.”
“Yes,” admitted her brother, “if we hear a cork popping we’ll know it’s Jim.”
But they heard nothing like this as they wandered on through the woods. Sometimes they even caught glimpses of crows flying overhead, but these black birds did not come down low enough to see the pieces of cheese which the Curlytops held out to them, hoping that one of the crows might be Mr. Jenk’s Jim.
“Oh, dear!” sighed Janet after a while. “I guess we’ll never find that crow. It’s like mother’s diamond locket that I lost. I guess it’s gone forever.”
“Maybe the locket is,” agreed Ted. “But we’ve seen the crow, so we know he’s somewhere around here.”
“But where?” asked his sister.
And Ted could not answer.
Still they did not give up. They had come to the woods to spend the afternoon. They could eat about three o’clock when they usually got hungry, and they might as well hunt for Jim as do anything else or play any of their pretend games.