BILLY, Flash is the cleverest cat ever!” May Nell exclaimed as she bounded in some days later.  
The quarantine had been raised, and at night Billy had “the run of the house”; though his days were still spent in “the prison cell” as he called the dark room. It seemed to him that light came in with the little girl, and all the sparkle and of the young summer without.
 
“What new trick has Flash been up to?”
 
“You know that bad, old, half-tailed Tom that whips every cat in town but Geewhillikins and Flash and Sir Thomas—”
 
“Yes; he’d lick him too, if Flash wasn’t Tom’s body-guard.”
 
“Well, just listen! This morning your mama set out the meat for their breakfast. I had Geewhillikins and Jerusalem Crickets in the pound—the woodshed, you know. Oh, they had a big breakfast before,” she added quickly, feeling rather than seeing Billy’s .
 
“I forgive you,” he .
 
“In a minute I heard the teentiest little mew. I looked and there was Tom against the side of the house. He was shivering with fright, and that old tramp cat was eating up his breakfast.”
 
“The darned old robber!” Billy started up and walked restlessly toward the door.
 
“I took a stick of from the kitchen and crept out to chase the thief away; but just then Flash around the corner of the house. He’s been on the front lawn all the morning watching for gophers; wouldn’t come when we called him.”
 
“That’s Flash; he always works for his breakfast,” Billy approved.
 
“He ran up and touched noses with Tom like a Feegee Islander,—are they the people that touch noses for ‘How do you do?’”
 
“I guess so. What else?”
 
“And Flash mewed just once, very softly. He couldn’t see the tramp cat, for the big oak tree hid him. But the second Tom answered his mew, Flash flew like a lightning , around the tree and up to that old, stealing cat. And he ran— O Billy, you’d have laughed an ache in your side if you could have seen him run,—over the fence, he ran again, across the street, down the sidewalk,—he never stopped till he came to the tip top of Mr. Potter’s big tree.”
 
“By heck! Flash is all right.”
 
“Then he walked back as slowly and dignifiedly as a minister,—isn’t ‘dignifiedly’ an awkward word? I wonder if it is right?”
 
“Never mind grammar, or spelling, whichever it is; what did Flash do?”
 
“He went up to Tom—he was still against the house—”
 
“Like the lazy coward he is,” Billy in............