24 What Birds Have Done With Me 



the hole was filled up; all the time laughing and 

 talking about a dance that had taken place the 

 night before. He declined to ride one of the 

 horses, so they each mounted one and rode away, 

 and left him. If he could have cried it would have 

 been a lot better. He had had to battle with him- 

 self not to cry over the little pigs, but this loss 

 left him dry-eyed and staring. There really had 

 been a witchery about Rosie, in life, that possibly 

 went a very little way to strengthen the old classic 

 myth that Dido was actually turned into such a 

 Heifer. Over all his domestic pets, she had 

 reigned supreme. He did not refuse his dinner, 

 but refused to wash his hands and face. 'Way 

 back in his subconsciousness was a vague feeling 

 that for him to be too clean, when she was smoth- 

 ered with dirt, would be a kind of disloyalty. 

 Then, for a few days, loyalty to her made him 

 welcome every dirty job about the place, and sin- 

 cere grief had the effect of transforming a natu- 

 rally cleanly little fellow, into a very dirty and 

 unkempt one. In a nut-shell, here is what he had 

 in his mind; he had learned in Sunday school that 

 man was made out of the dust of the earth it 

 must have been mud or it would not have stuck 

 together in death, we go back into the dirt; 

 what's the use to keep clean? 



This represents his condition of both mind and 

 body, on that May morning when he saw his first 



