“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.” “It is a mortification to me to this day,” went on Reveille, “even though the outcome has justified me. You know what our equine code of honour is—how we won’t lie or trick or steal or kill, as the humans do. Well, for nearly two months I was as false and tricky as a man.” “I don’t believe it,” dissented Bubbles. “The truly great always depreciate themselves,” asserted one of the mares. “No, ladies, I speak the truth,” reiterated the warrior; “even now the memory galls me worse than a spur.” “It would ease your conscience, I am sure,” suggested Bubbles, “to confess the wrong, if wrong there was. A highly sensitive and chivalric nature so often takes a morbidly extreme view of what is at most but a peccadillo.” “This, alas! was no peccadillo,” sighed Reveille, “as you will acknowledge after hearing it.” “I may be a colt, but I’m not a dolt,” sneered the polo pony to himself. “As if we weren’t all aware that the garrulous old fool has been itching to inflict his long tail upon us for the last ten minutes.” “My one consolation,” continued Reveille, “is that the roan filly was in the traces with me and an equal culprit in—” “I thought that one of the sex of Adam would saddle it on a woman before he got through,” interjected the cob. “_Cherchez la femme!_” laughed the polo pony, delighted to trot out his French. “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.