“And if it had not been for your coming,” screamingly replied a crowd that had arrived a long time before, “we would not be starving now. The gates ought to have been shut long ago.”
“Aye, Aye,” sneered a lot of the native born dogs, “the day after you got safe in, of course. For our part, we think it a wicked outrage on us that foreigners were allowed here at all, taking the bread out of the mouths of the rightful owners of the country. There ought to have been a law passed at first to keep out foreigners.”
“And where would your fathers have been then?” sneered back the foreigners.
And the contention waxed hot; each angrily vociferating that all the others were fools, idiots and liars, and they put out their tongues at one another, and snarled and growled; and at last they got into an awful fight; from which many of them emerged with torn ears and noses, broken legs, loosened teeth and amputated tails.
But as for the unfortunate dog that said “Fleas,” he was badly battered, for in the general fight every one of the combatants struck at him. But he got away at last and hid himself.
Nevertheless there were some of the far-away gazers that after the fight could not help thinking over the suggestive words he had let fall; and they thought that possibly their afflictions did come wholly and solely from their fleas.
The consequence was that these dogs took to regarding the fleas continually and very intently; and other dogs, wondering what they were looking at so much, began also to look at the fleas.
CHAPTER XXIV.
The Thinking Contagion Makes Alarming Progress.—Conference of Frightened Fleas.—Sage Counsel.—Efficacious Measures Devised.—How They Worked.—The Sacred Trusts.—The Holy Angel’s Book of Death.—The Plague Stayed.