A morning ride, I am glad to say, is not considered an adventure into the world, and morning rides are again possible without the risk of a drenching. I have left Pat and Arabi in the seclusion of their stables all this time, but for no fault, as we should say if we were selling them. Horses, I fear I am of those who fondly think, were created first in a mood of pure pleasure, and a careful Providence then made men to look after them. I should not like to tell Thisbe this; she takes the orthodox view about the succession of beasts and it might make her consider one unsound; but I do not mind saying it in print where it is likely to do less harm. Besides, my friend the Bengal Lancer entirely agrees with me, and that is what one might call a professional opinion. Pat and Arabi came walking in on the shelf one spring morning a year and a half ago, very meek and sorry for themselves, having climbed up every one of fifty-eight miles and seven thousand feet on very little, probably, but hay. They came out of a kicking, squealing herd in the Rawalpindi fair, where Tiglath-Pileser bought them on a day with their full respective equipment of hill-ropes, a ragged blanket, a tin bucket and a valet for less than twenty pounds apiece. The price seems low when you consider that Arabi’s papa was a Persian of pedigree and Pat’s an English thoroughbred. It is due to certain liberal provisions of an all-wise Government which nobody is compelled to discuss except the officials of the Remount Department. It will be enough to say that we do not boast of their connections on the maternal side, and painfully try to subdue all characteristics which seem to hark back that way. Their siring is by dirty scrip established, but in this country it is a wise foal that knows his own mother. Arabi has a pink streak on his nose which was plainly one of his mother’s charms, but this, as I cannot see it when I am on his back, troubles me less than his four white stockings and hoofs to match, which were also bequeathed to him by her. But his glossy coat and the arch of his neck and his paces he inherits from his more distinguished parent, after whom also we have had the weakness to name him. I don’t like to think of Arabi’s tie with the country; she probably went in an ekka[4] with a string of blue beads across her forehead; but Pat’s mother’s family was pure tribal Waziri, which means that with the manners and make of your English sire you come into the world with the wiry alertness your maternal grandfather learned in getting round lofty mountain corners in a hurry, and a way of lifting your feet in trotting over stony country that is pretty to see, and a pride in your dark grey coat and iron muscles that there is no need to conceal either. Of course you may also inherit the Waziri irritability of temperament. Pat, in a moment of annoyance, one day early last season, cow-kicked the Head of the Army Veterinary Department, but that was before he had been long