"Oh, I know you have!" I insisted. "She's told it to everybody who will listen."
"The story of the Coburn-Colt that wasn't hatched?"
His face was severe, but the little upward twist of his left shoulder was twitching as if with suppressed emotion.
"She told you with tears in her eyes, I know," I kept on. "All the old friends get the tearful accompaniment."
"Well, miss, doesn't that make you all the more ashamed of your foolishness?" he demanded.
"My foolishness?"
Something seemed to give way under me as he said this, for he was always on my side, and I had never found sympathy lacking before.
"I mean that—that Don Quixote carried to an extreme becomes Happy Hooligan," he pronounced.
I drew back in amazement.
"Why, Captain Horace Macauley—of Company A—18th Kentucky Infantry!"