The Wicked Flea. 63 



ing-holes, and they faint away if they can't get to the air. 

 Those that escaped to the top of Muff's head weren't so 

 stupefied that I could catch them with one hand. How- 

 ever, the experiment was a great success. I found a 

 dozen or more in the bottom of the bag when I took Muff 

 out. I burned the bag. So there were a dozen less fleas 

 on the premises. I calculated that there were about 

 28,000 fleas to begin with. Repeat the operation twenty 

 times a day and keep it up for twenty days figure it out 

 for yourself. It is a simple sum. I made up my mind, 

 however, that if I were to have any of the beautiful morn- 

 ing hours to work in and the beautiful evenings to sleep 

 in, something more penetrating would have to be em- 

 ployed. 



I got tincture of larkspur and slopped it on the cat 

 wherever it seemed necessary. I could feel Muff cringe 

 and shrink where the liquid touched his skin, and I 

 could see the fleas give a few kicks and die. To witness 

 their death filled me with savage joy, but when I saw 

 how mucky that cat looked and felt after I got through 

 with him my heart bled. I knew exactly how miserable 

 he was. It was just as if he had been in a barber's chair 

 and the barber had got him swampy with scented water 

 out of a porcelain bottle with the picture of a lady on the 

 side and a small tube in the cork to jerk the water out 

 with ; as if the barber had sopped a towel-end wet with 

 bay rum all over his face and pressed him with the dry 

 end, and dabbed at the places where it didn't need dabbing 

 and left him dribble at the moist places till the \vind blew 

 him dry. I knew the gummy, sticky, wretched sensation 

 so well that I hadn't the heart to inflict needless suffering 

 on a poor dumb brute. I mean the cat. Fleas I regard 

 as beyond the pale of human sympathy. If any man is 

 so constituted that his heart goes out to fleas and mos- 



