“All I meant to suggest, ladies and gentlemen,” affirmed Reveille, reflectively, “is that a woman is an excuse for anything. If this world is a fine world, it is because she pulls the reins more often for good than for bad.”
“‘Those who always praise woman know her but little; those who always blame her know her not at all,’” quoted the worldly-wise Kentuckian.
Reveille swallowed the last fragment of his second apple, cleared his throat, and began:—
“It was after Five Forks, where my Captain got a major’s oak-leaf added to his shoulder-straps, and a Minié ball in his arm, that the thing began. When he came out of the hospital—long before he should have, for the bone had been shattered, and took its own time to knit—we hung about Washington, swearing at our bad luck, my Major suffering worse than a docked horse in fly-time from the little splinters of bone that kept working out, and I eating my head off in—”
“History does repeat itself,” murmured the envious carriage-horse.
“Well, one day, after nearly three months of idleness, when I was about dead with stalldom, I permitted the orderly to saddle me, and after a little dispute with him as to my preferences, I let him take me round to Scott Square. There for the first time I met the roan filly and the big grey. She was a dear!” he added, with a sigh, and paused a moment.
“Ah, don’t stop there!” begged one of the ladies.
“Get a gait on you,” exhorted the cob.
Reveille sighed again softly, shook his head, and then came back to the present.
“‘May you never lack for oats and grass,’ said I, greeting them in my most affable style.