“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.
Chaik begins to find out that living with house-folks is really great fun.
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.