The Tale of Sandy Chipmunk | Page 8

chestnuts?" he asked.
And Uncle Sammy turned his back again.
"I have a few," he said.
"I'll buy a handful," Sandy told him, as he pulled another ear of corn out of the basket.
And after that Sandy bought hickory nuts and hazelnuts and walnuts.
"How about peanuts?" he asked then. "I've never eaten any; but I've heard they are very good."
Uncle Sammy stood up and searched his shelves very carefully. And while he was searching, Sandy Chipmunk took six ears of green corn out of the big basket under the table.
"I don't seem to have any peanuts," Uncle Sammy Coon said at last.
"Well--have you any nutmegs?" Sandy inquired.
And while Uncle Sammy was looking for nutmegs, Sandy Chipmunk slyly took six more ears from the basket. He had more corn now than he could carry. So he quickly tossed it out through the doorway.
[Illustration: Uncle Sammy Searched His Shelves Carefully]
Uncle Sammy Coon had to admit at last that he had no nutmegs. But Sandy kept him busy hunting for almonds and Brazil nuts and pecans, though he knew well enough that nothing of the sort grew in those woods.
By the time Uncle Sammy stopped looking there was no more corn left in his basket. But there was a great pile of corn on the ground just outside his door, where Sandy Chipmunk had thrown it.
Then Sandy said he must be going. And long before Uncle Sammy stirred out of his house Sandy had carried the corn away and hid it in a good, safe place. He thought that if he left it to dry it would make just as good food for winter as the wheat Uncle Sammy had eaten. And that was just what happened.
That night, long after Sandy Chipmunk had left the store, Uncle Sammy Coon had a great surprise. When he went to the basket, to get some green corn for his supper, there was not a single ear there.
"That's queer!" Uncle Sammy Coon exclaimed. "It was full this afternoon. And now there's not an ear left. I don't remember eating it." He thought deeply for a long time. And after a while he said to himself: "I wonder if it could have been that Chipmunk boy?" But he decided that Sandy was too small to have carried away all those big ears under his very nose. "I must have eaten it," he told himself. "I'm getting terribly forgetful."
And since he thought he had already had his supper, Uncle Sammy Coon went to bed without any supper at all.

IX
WORKING FOR MR. CROW
Old Mr. Crow had decided that he would not fly south to spend the winter. He said he was getting almost too old for such a long journey. And he remembered, too, that he had heard the weather was going to be mild that winter.
"There's just one thing that worries me," he told Aunt Polly Woodchuck one day, when he was talking the matter over with her. "I don't know what I shall have to eat."
"Why, you can sleep until spring, just as I do," Aunt Polly said. "Then you won't want anything to eat."
But Mr. Crow said he was a light sleeper and that he could no more sleep the whole winter long than Aunt Polly could fly.
"Then why don't you store up some corn, the way the squirrels do?" she asked him. There was one thing about Aunt Polly--she always had a remedy for everything.
"That's a good idea!" Mr. Crow told her. "Maybe I can get somebody to help me, too."
And that very day he went to Sandy Chipmunk and asked him if he didn't want to gather some food for him.
"How much will you pay me?" Sandy asked him.
"I'll give you half what you gather for me," said Mr. Crow. "And that's certainly fair, I'm sure. It's often done. And it's called 'working at the halves.'"
It seemed fair to Sandy Chipmunk, too.
"That's a bargain," he said. "I'll begin right away. Where do you want me to hide the food for you, Mr. Crow?"
Old Mr. Crow told Sandy to put it in his house in the top of the tall elm tree.
"I don't like to climb so high," Sandy objected. "You know I'm not so good a climber as Frisky Squirrel. He wouldn't mind climbing up to your house. But it might make me dizzy."
"Well," said Mr. Crow, "why don't you bring the food to the foot of my tree and get Frisky Squirrel to carry it to the top?"
"I'll do it," said Sandy Chipmunk--"if Frisky is willing." So he went off to find Frisky Squirrel, who proved to be much interested in the plan.
"How much will you pay me?" he asked Sandy Chipmunk.
"I suppose you ought to have half the food," Sandy said. "That's what Mr. Crow is paying me."
Frisky Squirrel said that that seemed fair. So they