Now it stood to reason that Corbie's meals could not be served him every fifteen minutes on the ridge-pole of a steep roof. So the long ladder had to be brought out, and the crow carried to the ground and advised to keep within easy reach until he could use his wings. It was only a few days until Corbie could fly down from anything he could climb up; and from that hour he never lacked for amusement. Of course, the greedy little month-old baby found most of his fun for a while in being fed. "Kah! Kah! Kah!" he called from sun-up to sun-down, keeping the Brown-eyed Boy and the Blue-eyed Girl busy digging earthworms and cutworms and white grubs, and soaking bread in milk for him. "Gubble-gubble-gubble," he said as he swallowed it--it was all so very good. [Illustration: _"Kah! Kah! Kah!" he called from sun-up to sun-down._] The joke of it was that Corbie, even then, had a secret--his first one. He had many later on. But the very first one seems the most wonderful, somehow. Yes, he could feed himself long before he let his foster brother and sister know it; and I think, had he been a wild crow instead of a tame one, he would have fooled his own father and mother the same way--the little rascal. No one would think, to see him with beak up and open, and with fluttering wings held out from his sides, that the little chap begging "Kah! kah! kah!" was old enough to do more than "gubble" the food that was poked into his big throat. But for all that, when the Brown-eyed Boy forgot the dish of earthworms and ran off to play, Corbie would listen until he could hear no one near, and then cock his bright eye down over the wriggling worms. Then, very slyly, he would pick one up with a jerk and catch it back into his mouth. One by one he would eat the worms, until he wanted no more; and then he would hide the rest by poking them into cracks or covering them with chips, crooning the while over his secret joke. "There-there-tuck-it-there," was what his croon sounded like; but if the Brown-eyed Boy or the Blue-eyed Girl came near, he would flutter out his wings at his sides and lift his open beak, his teasing "Kah" seeming to say, "Honest, I haven't had a bite to eat since you fed me last." When his body was grown so big with his stuffing that he was almost a full-sized crow, he stopped his constant begging for food. The days of his greed were only the days of his growth needs, and the world was too full of adventures to spend all his time just eating.