The mauve dressing-gown, reaching to the floor, displayed to advantage the girl’s lithe figure, accentuating its long, graceful lines.  The bodice, opened at the neck, exposed the slender white throat, around which the summer’s sun had tanned a ruddy ring.  Her hair had been parted in the center and twined in adorable curls about the young head.

The transformation drew an untactful ejaculation from Horace, and he stared intently at the sensitive face.  Flea’s gray eyes, after the first hasty glance at him, sought Flukey.

“Flukey ain’t so awful sick, be he?” she questioned fearfully.

Ann passed an arm tenderly around her.  “Yes, child, he is very ill.  My brother and I want to speak to you about him.”

“But he ain’t goin’ dead?”

Her tone brought Horace nearer.  In spite of Flea’s somberness, the bouyancy of her youth obliterated the memory of every other girl he knew.  He was confounded by the thought that a short time before she had stood as a ragged boy before him.  She had been transformed into womanhood by Ann’s clothing.

Flea bent over Flukey and hid her face.  Even when Horace had discovered the pig in the salad, her embarrassment had been of small moment to this.  After an instant, she lifted her eyes from her muttering brother and allowed them to fall upon her Prince.  There was an unmistakable smile upon his lips; nevertheless, a great fear possessed her.  If Flukey were allowed to stay there because of his illness, she at least would be taken away; for she had never heard of a theft being entirely overlooked, and she believed that her imprisonment must be the penalty.

She stooped a little and lovingly touched Flukey’s shoulder, looking first at Ann, then at Horace.  Straightening up, she burst out: 

“Mister, if ye’re goin’ to have me pinched for stealin’, do it quick before my brother knows about it, and—­I’d ruther go to prison in Fluke’s pants—­please!”

Still the master of the house did not speak.  Flea was filled with suspicion, and thought she divined the cause of his quietness and smile.  He was ridiculing her dress, perhaps making sport of the way her curls were arranged.  She thrust one hand upward and tumbled the mass of hair into disorder.

“Yer woman put these togs onto me,” she said, “and I feel like an old guy—­dressed up this way!”

Anger forced tears into her eyes, and her two small brown hands clenched under the hanging lace at her wrists.  Her words and the spontaneous action deepened the expression on the face of the silent man, and she cried out again: 

“Ye needn’t be making fun of me, Mister!  I can’t help how I look.”

But a feverish exclamation from the sick boy so increased her anxiety for him that her own troubles were overwhelmed.  She was rendered unmindful that Ann had softly called her name; nor did she realize that Shellington had spoken quietly to her.