"To be sure! To be sure! You _couldn't_ have expected that of Bill,"
agreed Uncle Andy. "Still, you know, the opinion of the prairie dogs
would have been interesting, wouldn't it? Well, I'll tell you a story
just as soon as I can get this old pipe to draw properly, and then you
can judge the opinion of the prairie dogs as to whether the Little
Burrowing Owl is 'good' or not. If their opinion does not agree with
Bill's, why you can choose for yourself between the two."
"Prairie Dog Village was of considerable size, covering as it did
perhaps a dozen acres of the dry, light prairie soil. Its houses were
crowded together without any regard to order or arrangement, and so
closely as to suggest that their owners imagined land was scarce in the
neighborhood. It wasn't. For hundreds of miles in every direction the
plains stretched away to the dim horizon. There was room everywhere,
nothing much, in fact, _but_ room, with a little coarse grass and
plenty of clear air. But the population went in for crowding by
preference, and didn't care a cactus whether it was hygienic or not.
"The houses were ail underground, each with a rounded hillock of earth
beside its front door; and the size of these hillocks was an indication
of the size of the houses beneath, for they were all formed by the
earth brought to the surface in the process of excavating the rooms and
passages.
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