could do to stop them, away they flew, cawing loudly and talking it
all over noisily. Blacky was the last to go, and his heart was
sorrowful. However could he get those eggs?



CHAPTER IX: Blacky Thinks Of Farmer Brown's Boy

"Such luck!" grumbled Blacky, as he flew over to his favorite tree
to do a little thinking. "Such luck! Now all my neighbors know about
the nest of Hooty the Owl, and sooner or later one of them will find
out that there are eggs in it. There is one thing about it, though,
and that is that if I can't get them, nobody can. That is to say,
none of my relatives can. I've tried every way I can think of, and
those eggs are still there. My, my, my, how I would like one of them
right now!"

Then Blacky the Crow did a thing which disappointed scamps often do,
-- began to blame the ones he was trying to wrong because his plans
had failed. To have heard him talking to himself, you would have
supposed that those eggs really belonged to him and that Hooty and
Mrs. Hooty had cheated him out of them. Yes, Sir, that is what you
would have thought if you could have heard him muttering to himself
there in the tree-top. In his disappointment over not getting those
eggs, he was so sorry for himself that he actually did feel that he
was the one wronged, -- that Hooty and Mrs. Hooty should have let
him have those eggs.

Of course, that was absolute foolishness, but he made himself
believe it just the same. At least, he pretended to believe it. And