“I always did hate a quitter on the home stretch,” chimed in the discontented cob, pleased to have a grievance. The narrator shook his head. “No gentleman,” he asserted, “who overheard what followed would ever tell of it; and a horse has an even higher standard of honour.” “Ah, darling Mr. Reveille,” pleaded the feminine part of his audience, “just a little more!” “I hate to seem mulish,” responded the horse, “and so I will add one small incident that is too good not to be repeated. When we rode up to the house that evening, shamefully late for dinner, my Major lifted Miss Fairley off Miss Gaiety in a way that suggested that she might be very breakable, and, after something I don’t choose to tell you about, he said: “‘I wonder if we shall ever have another such ride!’ “‘It doesn’t seem possible, Stanley,’ whispered my Felicia, very softly. ‘You know, even the horses seemed to understand!’” Just as Reveille finished thus, a human voice was heard, saying: “You will have the veterinary see the cob at once, and let me know if it is a case which requires more than blistering.” Then came a second and very treble voice. “Papa,” it begged, “will oo lif’ me up on ol’ Weveille’s back?” And the next moment a child of three was sitting astride the old warrior and clinging to his mane. “Well, you old scoundrel,” said the human, “do you know you are getting outrageously fat?” “Weveille isn’t not any scoundwel,” denied the child, earnestly. “Mama says Weveille is a’ ol’ darlin’.” “Your mama, fortunately for Reveille and me, always had a soft spot for idiots,” explained the man, stroking the horse’s nose affectionately. “But I will say this for the old fellow: if most folly resulted as well as his, there would be a big premium on fools.” Reveille winked his off eye at the other steeds. “Aren’t these humans comical?” he laughed. A WARNING TO LOVERS ❦ Before some blazing logs, which fill a deep fireplace with warmth that overflows to just the right extent into the room, stands, slightly skewed, a sofa. The sofa is a comfortable one. It is short, deep, and low; and the arms have a suggestion of longing to be filled that is truly seductive. In addition, two down cushions imply that the sofa is quite prepared to fit itself to any figure, be it long, short, broad, or narrow. Altogether, it is a most satisfactory sofa. But the satisfactoriness does not end here. Seated at one end of that sofa is a girl, clearly in that neither grass nor hay period, which begins at sixteen and ends at eighteen. Not that it is intended to suggest that because the girl is neither hay nor grass she is unattractive. Quite the reverse. New-mown hay is the sweetest, and the girl, if neither child nor woman, is, in her way, just as sweet.