"I have heard a great many stories which Mr. Crow has told; but never one about him," your Aunt Amy interrupted. "If he tried to deceive the other birds, I surely would like to know about it."

"Well, he did," Mrs. Mouser Cat said emphatically, sitting bolt upright; "but of course he doesn't like to have the story told, so I had rather you wouldn't let him know I mentioned it.

"I don't know how he happened to get it into his head to do such a thing, for, as a rule, he spends the most of his time over in the big tree telling stories or making poetry; but he grew foolish once, and whenever anybody came where he was, he said he had strange growing feathers, and the doctor believed he was turning into a peacock.

"Of course that made a good deal of excitement around here, among all of us, for it would be a strange thing for a crow to change in that way, and he had twice as many visitors as he ever had before, all wanting to know about the new feathers.

"Well, of course he couldn't keep saying that they were coming, and not show any signs of them, so one day he said he felt terribly sick and guessed he should go into the hospital. Then we didn't see anything of him for most a week, until little Redder Squirrel came around and said Mr. Crow was all right; that he had as many as six peacock feathers growing right out of his tail.

"Well, now, you can believe we were astonished, and more excited over it than we had been since young Mr. Thomas Cat painted the canary yellow. Of course we asked Redder Squirrel where we could see him, and he said Mr. Crow had agreed to come out on the hill, just under the tree, that afternoon.

"If we animals around here were anxious to see him, you can guess that the peacocks were just about wild, and when the time came for Mr. Crow to show himself, all the peacocks for as many as five miles around were gathered under the big tree. Mr. Crow didn't know anything about their coming, until he marched right out in the midst of them.

Mr. Crow showing his new feathers to the peacocks

"Now Mr. Crow is really a wise bird, and how it happened that he was so foolish as to do what he did, beats me. Anybody with half an eye could see that he had simply stuck these feathers in his tail, and was trying to make us believe they had grown there. If he had stayed on the tree where we couldn't get very near him, there might have been some chance of deceiving us; but there he was right down where we could put our paws on him if we wanted to. And the peacocks! Angry? Oh me, oh my, don't say a word!

"One big one reached over with his beak, and pulled a feather from Mr. Crow's tail.

"'The next time you set yourself up for one of us, it would be a good idea to tie the feathers in, else they may drop out, as this one has,' the peacock said, and I expected to see Mr. Crow almost faint away with shame. But bless you, he never thought of doing anything of that kind. He took the feather as bold as a lion, looked at the end of it, and then he said, careless-like:

"'Well, I declare! I guess I must be moulting,' and with that, off he flew. We didn't see him again for as much as two weeks, and then he agreed not to write any poetry about us if we wouldn't tell the story of the feathers; but young Mr. Thomas Cat couldn't hold in, and reported it far and near, till Mr. Crow paid him back in good shape."