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A metropolitan newspaper man was struck with the idea of a humorous series of articles to pay for his vacation, entitled, "Characters I Have Met In Maine" and forthwith, perched on the back of the seat behind the Flopper, proceeded to sketch out the first one, with the mental determination to get off at Needley for the local color necessary to its climax.
After that they arranged their horseraces over the bar of the saloon, and rode, ran or walked to the quarter-mile stretch of level trail beyond the stockyards to witness the running; when they would hurry back to settle their bets over the bar where they had drunk to the preliminaries. Bert Rogers came early, riding Flopper.
Helena was holding out a very dainty hand, with pink, wiggling fingers. "I'll need, oh, ever so much more than they will," she declared, with a bewitching pout. "And, please, I'm waiting very patiently." Doc Madison laughed. "By and by, Helena," he said, patting her hand. "Well, Flopper, well, Harry what do you say?"
The boy's soul seemed in his face hope, a world of it, as he gazed at the Patriarch, sickening fear as he looked at the Flopper; his lips moving without sound, his body trembling with emotional excitement.
A staircase, making one side of a narrow and dimly lighted hall, from down whose length came muffled sounds from the barroom, was before him; and this, without hesitation, the Flopper began to mount, his knee thumping from step to step, his dangling leg echoing the sound in a peculiar; quick double thump.
The room was a fairly large one, gaudily appointed with cheap furnishings, one of the Roost's private parlors a girl on a couch in the corner had raised herself on her elbow, and her dark eyes were fixed uncompromisingly upon the Flopper, but she made no answer.
Onward they went a huddled mass of humanity, literate and illiterate, of all ages, of all conditions, and none laughed, none grinned, none smiled, none spoke all that was past. They stopped, they moved again as the Flopper stopped and moved. Occasionally a child cried out occasionally there came a discordant, racking cough that was all.
"I gotcher!" said the Flopper enthusiastically. "Why say, Doc, dat's de way I'd do meself swipe me, if I wouldn't!" "That's the way nearly everybody would do," said Madison, laughing. "There's at least a few similar kinks common to our noble race we're busy most of the time trying to fool ourselves one way or another. Well, that's about all.
Larger and larger grew the circle around the Flopper, filling and blocking the road, overflowing into front yards, and massing on the little lawn of the hotel clear up to the veranda until fields and houses were deserted, and to the last inhabitant Needley was there.
"T'anks, mum," said the Flopper again, "but I couldn't. You needs it, an' I can get along widout it. Dey're stallin' on me, but I can get dere by myself if any one'll show me de way." "I'll show you, mister," piped a shrill voice and young Holmes on his crutch hopped into the circle. "I'll show you, mister an' 'tain't fur, neither." "Swipe me!" muttered the Flopper, as he surveyed the lad.
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