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Like most people, he was not overjoyed by Jasper Jay's visits. But he crept on top of the stone wall and chipped a how-dy-do to his caller. "That's no way to greet anybody!" cried Jasper Jay, rudely. "If you want to make a person feel that he is welcome you ought to speak up good and loud and slap him on the back. And you must look happy, too." Little Mr. Chippy smiled faintly.
No sooner have they despoiled Whiteley's than they will advance upon Jay's and Marshall and Snelgrove's. It is impossible to stop them. There is no safety from the Tea-Tray and the Red Weed but in instant flight." That night the world was again lit by a pale pink flash of light. It was the Fifth Crinoline.
In quick succession Mark saw a squirrel, a woodpecker, and a jay, creatures so perfectly expressive of the place, that they appeared to him more like visions than natural objects; and when they were gone he stood with beating heart in silence as if in a moment the trees should fly like woodpeckers, the sky flash and flutter its blue like a jay's wing, and the very earth leap like a squirrel for his amazement.
"Ah beg yo' pardon, Brer Rabbit, but Ah don' seem to have it quite right in mah haid what yo'all am going down to the Laughing Brook for," said Unc' Billy in the politest way. Peter chuckled in spite of himself, as he once more replied: "It's to keep me from going crazy." Then Peter told Unc' Billy all about Sammy Jay's troubles and all about the troubles of Sticky-toes the Tree Toad.
Chloris gave an unromantic snort and sat with unnecessary clumsiness upon Jay's toe. So Jay returned, falling suddenly out of the music of the sea into the band-of-hopeful music of distant Boy Scouts on the march. Number Eighteen Mabel Place is not, as a rule, a hopeful place to return to. Jay and I know quite well what Satan felt like when he was expelled from Heaven.
Beside her on the floor lay a tattered picture-book, a big bottle half full of red shelled corn, and John Jay's most precious treasure, a toy watch that could be endlessly wound up. He had heaped them all beside her, hoping they would keep her occupied until his return, in case she should waken earlier than usual.
And since it was for that very purpose that he had gone without both his breakfast and his morning-song, he was satisfied. He went home a little later, feeling well pleased, so far, with his plan for putting an end to Jasper Jay's rudeness.
Jasper Jay was surprised to see them, because it was seldom that anybody but his relations called on him. Of course, if one makes himself disagreeable as Jasper generally did people do not go out of their way to see him. But it was different with Jasper Jay's relations. Some of them were just as unmannerly and ill-bred as he was.
And later, I fell in with a little family party on the side of Mount Washington, and they, too, refused me so much as a note. Probably I was too near the birds in every case, though in the third instance there was no attempt at skulking, nor any symptom of nervousness. I have often been impressed and amused by the blue jay's habit in this respect.
First it hid under the little ones, then it began to burrow down through the feather-bed of the Sparrow-hawk's nest, then through the Blue Jay's nest, then through the soft stuff of the Blackbird's nest and among the old truck left by the Chickadees till it struck the hard mud floor of the Blackbird's nest, and through that it could not dig.
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