“Probably,” assented the oldster, genially; “for that very incident proves my point. What that shot reminded me of was the last time I heard my Major fire his revolver. I saw a long, gentle slope, up which a brigade of ‘secesh’ were charging to a railroad embankment protected by a battery of twelve-pounders firing six rounds of case-shot to the minute. And I was right among the guns again, seeing and hearing it all; and my Major—only he was a captain then—was saying as coolly and quietly as he orders the carriage now: ‘Steady, men, steady! There’s a hundred yards yet, and they can’t stand it to the finish. Double charge with canister! Three more rounds will settle them.’ Which was just what it did. We horses, with the aid of the men and guns, held the Weldon railroad, and Lee and his mules stopped holding Richmond.”
“Doesn’t he tell a story beautifully?” remarked Bubbles, in a distinctly audible aside to Lassie.
“I’ve never known a better raconteur,” answered Lassie, in a stage whisper of equal volume.
“Lay you a peck of oats to a quart that the girls get that secret out of him,” whispered the Majors saddle-horse, who, as a Kentuckian of thoroughbred stock, had sporting and race-track proclivities.
“Not with me!” denied the second cob. “Besides, no gentleman ever bets on a certainty. Gaze at the self-satisfied look on the old fool’s phiz. Lord! how a pretty face and figure, combined with flattery, can come it round the old ones!”
There could be no doubt about it. Reveille was smirking, though trying not to desperately; and to aid his attempt, he went on, with a pretence of unconscious musing, as if he were still in the past: “Yes; we are ruled by our imaginations, and, consequently, though I have reached the honourable but usually neglected period in life which retires an officer and a horse from active service, I get a box-stall and extra rations and perquisites.”
“How rarely is the story-telling faculty united with the philosophical mind!” soliloquised Bubbles to the rafters.
“And how rarely,” rejoined Lassie, “are those two qualities combined with a finished, yet graphic, style!”
“I would gladly tell you that story,” said the old war-horse, “but it isn’t one to be repeated. Every horse who isn’t a cow—to make an Irish bull, which, by the bye, is a very donkeyish form of joke—has done certain things that he has keenly regretted, even though he believes that he acted for the good—just as brave soldiers will act as spies, honourable lawyers defend a scoundrel, and good women give ‘at homes.’”
“What a decadence there has been in true wit!” remarked Lassie, apropos of nothing. “It is such a pleasure to be put next a horse at dinner whose idea of humour was formed before youthful pertness was allowed to masquerade as wit.”