oo dot f'eas?"

Fido looked crestfallen, for could Fido have spoken he would have
confessed that he indeed _was_ afflicted with fleas,--not with very
many fleas, but just enough to interrupt his slumbers and his meditations
at the most inopportune moments. And the little boy's guileless
impeachment set Fido to feeling creepy-crawly all of a sudden, and without
any further ado Fido turned deftly in his tracks, twisted his head back
toward his tail, and by means of several well-directed bites and plunges
gave the malicious Bedouins thereabouts located timely warning to behave
themselves. The little boy thought this performance very funny, and he
laughed heartily. But Fido looked crestfallen.

Oh, what play and happiness they had that day; how the green grass kissed
their feet, and how the smell of clover came with the springtime breezes
from the meadow yonder! The red-headed woodpecker heard them at play, and
she clambered out of the hollow maple and dodged hither and thither as if
she, too, shared their merriment. Yes, and the yellow thistle-bird, whose
nest was in the blooming lilac-bush, came and perched in the pear-tree and
sang a little song about the dear little eggs in her cunning home. And
there was a flower in the fence-corner,--a sweet, modest flower that no
human eyes but the little boy's had ever seen,--and she sang a little
song, too, a song about the kind old Mother Earth and the pretty sunbeams,
the gentle rain and the droning bees. Why, the little boy had never known
anything half so beautiful, and Fido,--he, too, was delighted beyond all
telling. If the whole truth must be told, Fido had such an exciting and
bewildering romp that day that when night came, and he lay asleep on the
kitchen floor, he dreamed he was tumbling in the green grass with the
little boy, and he tossed and barked and whined so in his sleep that the
hired man had to get up in the night and put him out of doors.