“The thought that I had was that there are more busy bees at work than one would suppose; and the mention of the desert recalled to my mind what I read somewhere of the remarkable optimism of a flea which a man found on his foot after crossing the desert of the Sahara. It had lived on in the sand, goodness knows how long, on the chance of some animal passing within the radius of a leap and so carrying it back to a congenial and not too rasorial a civilisation. How many thousand million chances to one there were that it should not be rescued; yet its chance came at last.”
“Meaning?”
“Well, my flea is your bee, and where there are no bees there may be plenty of fleas.”
“Yes; only my bee comes with healing in its wings, and your flea is the bearer of disease,” said I; and I knew that I had got the better of him there, though I was not so sure that he knew it.
Friswell is a queer mixture.
After another pause, he said,—
“By the way, the mention of Campbell and his group brought back to me one of the most popular of the poems of the period—Lord Ullin's Daughter.—You recollect it, of course.”
“A line or two.”
“Well, it begins, you know:—
“A chieftain to the Highlands bound,