118 GRAY LADY AND THE BIRDS 
overhanging sugar maple, quite down to the orchard lunch- 
counter and back, had crept in at the window unobserved, 
walked across the floor to the work-table, about which the 
girls sat, and, going under it, was concealed by the cloth. 
At this moment Eliza Clausen dropped her thimble. It 
rolled under the table, and as she stooped to get it she 
was just in time to see Jim seize it in his beak and half fly, 
half scramble to the back of Goldilocks’ chair, with his 
prize held fast. 
“Oh, my thimble! Jim’ll swallow it!’ she wailed, and 
the boys, with one impulse, started in pursuit. They could 
not have done a worse thing, for, seeing himself cornered, 
Jim’s hiding instinct came to his aid, and sidling along to 
the unceiled side of the attic, he quickly dropped the 
thimble between the studs, and you could hear it rattle 
down to the next story. Then he took refuge behind his 
mistress’ chair, from which he peeped inquisitively, with 
the sidewise look peculiar to Crows, so that it was impos- 
sible not to laugh at his quizzical expression. 
“Do not worry about the thimble, Eliza,” said Gray 
Lady, ‘“‘for those you are wearing for the sewing lessons 
are not prize thimbles, but merely penny affairs. This 
gives you a chance to see some of the little bits of mischief 
that a tame young Crow can do in his first season, so that 
you can imagine what a wild, old, wise, leader Crow 
can plot and plan in other ways. You all know the Crow, 
or rather, to be exact, the American Crow, for there is 
the Fish Crow and a southern relation, the Florida Crow, 
and in all there are twenty-five different kinds in North 
America alone. This Common Crow is very plentiful here, 
as he is in almost all parts of the United States, where 
