CORBIE 



splashed and bathed. After that, the Blue-eyed Girl 

 showed him a little water-snail. He turned it over in his 

 beak and dropped it. It meant no more to him than a 

 pebble. ''I think you'll like to eat it, Corbie/' said the 

 Brown-eyed Boy, breaking the shell and giving it to him 

 again; ^^even people eat snails, I Ve heard." 



Corbie took the morsel and swallowed it, and soon 

 was cracking for himself all the snails his comrades gave 

 him. But that was not enough, for their eyes were only 

 the eyes of children and his bright bird eyes could find 

 them twice as fast. So he waded in the river, playing 

 ''I spy" with his foster brother and sister, and beating 

 them, too, at the game, though they had hunted snails 

 as many summers as he had minutes. 



He enjoyed doing many of the same things the child- 

 ren did. It was that, and his sociable, merry ways, that 

 made him such a good playfelloAV, and because he wanted 

 them to be happy in his pleasure and to praise his clever 

 tricks. Like other children, eating when he was hungry 

 gave him joy, and at times he made a game of it that was 

 fun for them all. Every now and then he would go off 

 quietly by himself, and fill the hollow of his throat with 

 berries from the bushes near the river-bank and, fiying 

 back to his friends, would spill out his fruit, uncrushed, 

 in a little pile beside them while he crooned and chuckled 

 about it. He seemed to have the same sort of good time 



113 



