When he joined he had bought the first charger of the officer whose retirement created the vacancy which made room for him, a perfectly broken thoroughbred old chestnut, cunning in riding-school drill, knowing every command as if it had studied the book of the _manège_. This was a great pull for Jellypod; if only he could have kept in the saddle, the gallant old horse would have kept him right. But with “stirrups up” he couldn’t keep in the saddle had his life depended on doing so. At a walk he was all right; but as soon as the word “Trot!” was given, he was all over the place. If he hung on by his eyelids for a round or two, old Bridoon, the non-payment of footing rankling in his mind, would touch up the old chestnut with the long whip; and then Jellypod would shut his eyes and gently roll off the saddle on to the tan. The man, however, had both pluck and perseverance. He never did get his seat without stirrups, but when these were allowed to the ride, he did better; trusting to them and to the reins to an unjustifiable extent, and rolling about, as old Bridoon used to say, “like an apple in a bucket”--only the expression was mostly a good deal coarser; but coming to grief altogether with much greater rarity. To the last he was the most abject duffer at “heads and posts,” and it was well that the old chestnut carried a good head, else every time he and his rider went over the bar, the latter would have shot bodily over the former’s ears. Altogether, Jellypod had a good six months in the school before he was dismissed riding-drill, and then it was only because, as the riding-master said, he could not be bothered with him any longer.