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Fledra's voice reached the dreaming man, bending over his desk, and he bounded to answer her call. He found her supporting her brother, white and shivering, with eyes strained by fright. "I told him," gasped Fledra looking up; "but I didn't mean to." "Told him what?" "Pappy Lon," muttered Floyd, "comin' for Flea!" Horace caught the words in dismay.
Many were the times he wept in boyish bitterness against the commands of Lon, revealing his sorrows to Flea, who listened moodily. "I wouldn't steal nothin' if I was you," she said again and again. But Flukey one day silenced this reiteration by confiding to her that Pappy Lon had threatened to turn her to his trade if he rebelled.
"Verily," answered the flea, "I took refuge in thy dwelling from slaughter and come to thee, seeking thy protection and not anywise coveting thy house, nor shall aught of mischief betide thee from me nor aught to make thee leave it. Nay, I hope to repay thy favours to me with all good, and thou shalt assuredly see and praise the issue of my words."
Will ye take Flea out, Sister Ann?" Both girls left the room, as Horace drew a chair to the bed. "I ain't goin' to get well," said Flukey slowly. "I know the doctor thinks so, too, 'cause he said there was somethin' the matter with my heart. And I have to go and leave Flea." Shellington took the thin, white hand in his. "You must not become downhearted, boy; that's not the way to get well.
"We run away 'cause Pappy Lon were a makin' me steal when I didn't want to," he explained, clearing his throat, "and he was goin' to make Flea be Lem's woman. And that's the truth, Mister, and Lem wasn't goin' to marry her, nuther!" He rambled on in a monotone as if too sick for inflection. Flea placed one arm about his neck. "I'm a girl! I'm Flea Cronk!" she confessed brokenly.
"Flea," said Lon again, "ye came home when I said ye was to, and ye promised that ye'd do what I said, didn't ye?" "Yes." "And ye remember well that I promised ye to Lem afore ye went away. I still be goin' to keep that promise to Lem." The bright blood that had swept her face paced back, leaving her ashen pale. She did not speak, but swayed a little, and supported herself on the top of his chair.
"I am a poor, ignorant specimen of ape, that can be let play with apparatus, am I?" he rasped, as he picked up the key-tube of the specialist and opened the door of his prison. "Maybe they'll learn sometime that it ain't always safe to judge by the looks of a flea how far he can jump!"
"'Don't you see him, humped up about half-way up the tree? inquired the old man, peering over his spectacles and getting mystified. "'No, I don't, responded the boy; and then turning and looking into his father's face, he exclaimed: 'Yes, I spy your squirrel! You have been firing at a flea on your own brow!"
Why should we trouble about vastness mere extension in space? There is a sense in which the infinitesimally small is more marvellous, more disquieting, than the infinitely great. The ant, the flea, nay, the phagocyte in our blood, is really a more startling phenomenon than all the mechanics and chemistry of the heavens.
"Now, then, answer me a few questions. Did your father ever live in Syracuse?" "Yep, me and Flea were born there." "How old are you?" "Comin' sixteen." "And your sister? Tell me about her. Is she how old is she?" "We be twins," replied Floyd steadily. The girl, watching the unfolding of a life's tragedy, was silent even to hushing her breathing. The truth was slowly dawning upon her.
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