"
"Bill told me," said the Child, with more confidence in his tones than
he usually accorded to this authority.
"Oh, Bill!" sniffed Uncle Andy. "And haven't you got used to Billy's
fairy stories yet?"
There was an obstinate look in the Child's earnest blue eyes which
showed that this time the imaginative guide had told him a tale which
he was unwilling to discredit.
"I know very well, Uncle Andy," said he with a judicial air, "that Bill
loves to yarn, and often pretends to know a lot of things that aren't
so. But I think he's telling the truth this time. He said he was.
It's a little owl that lives out West on the big sandy plains. And it
makes its nest in holes on the ground. It knows how to dig these holes
itself, you know; but it can't dig them half, or a quarter, so well as
the prairie dogs can. So it gets the prairie dogs to let it live in
their big, comfortable burrows; and in return for this hospitality it
kills and eats some of the rattlesnakes, the very small ones, I
suppose, of course, which come round among the burrows looking for the
young prairie dogs. Well, you know, Uncle Andy, Bill has been out West
himself, and he's seen the villages of the prairie dogs, and the little
owls sitting on the tops of the hillocks which are on the roofs of the
prairie dogs' houses, and the rattlesnakes coiled up here and there in
the hot, sunny hollows.
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