“Oh, it is Mr. Harris, and he is as kind as he looks. His horse Charlie is amusing, is he not? Yes, he knows the customers as well as Mr. Harris does, and we always speak of them as ‘Charlie & Co.’ I doubt if Mr. Harris could get on without his silent partner.” “Does the horse always act as he has to-day?” “Invariably. He is as punctual and methodical as his master is neat and kind-hearted. They have served me with milk for many years, and I should not be able to keep house without them, I believe.” “I shall not forget them,” I replied, “and if I ever make Elton my home, I shall certainly give my order to ‘Charlie & Co.’” A few months later we removed to Elton, and I lost no time in requesting Charlie & Co. to include our home in their daily rounds. It was at that period that I became well acquainted with Charlie and learned to appreciate his wonderful intelligence, and the clever ways which so endeared him to his master. Twice daily did Charlie appear at my door, and it was not long before it became his favorite stopping-place, for at it he rarely failed to receive an apple, a biscuit, and at last, when he had acquired a taste for it, a lump of sugar. But this was distinctly a cultivated taste, and his efforts to learn to like the dainty were funny beyond words to express. My little daughter was the first to cultivate Charlie’s taste for sweets, and rarely a day passed that she did not watch for his coming and have ready the dainty. Charlie had a peculiar gait, which was probably the result of having been used under the saddle in his younger days. It was neither a pace, nor yet a trot, but a sort of cross between the two, and when he desired to hasten it he broke into a distinct canter. Directly he left the nearest neighbor’s at whose house he was forced to stop before reaching his little friend’s home, Charlie, in the words of dear Lewis Carroll, would come “gallumping”--no other word will express it--for his dainty. The dear old head would be put close down to the arms waiting to caress him, and after a bit of affectionate demonstration on both sides, the proffered lump of sugar would be taken, toyed with a moment by the velvety lips, bitten in two, and held while Charlie seemed thinking the matter over, meantime looking at his little friend and shaking his head wisely. “Eat it, Charlie; it’s delicious,” the little one would say. But Charlie had his own ideas on the subject, and was not to be hurried. It was not until he had thoroughly tested this new article of diet, turned it over upon his tongue, crunched it with his nippers, that he finally decided it was really intended to go the way of oats and hay.