And of course it was the jolliest day for Percival. "I never had such fun, you know," Percival declared to Aunt Maggie. "I rode the pony all alone and Mr. Hannaford said I was a Pocket Marvel; so I should like to know what you think of that?" Mr. Hannaford, indeed, was mightily pleased with Percival. Mr. Hannaford was an immensely stout man with a tremendously deep voice and with very twinkling little eyes set in a superbly red face. He wore brown leather gaiters and very tight cord-breeches and a very loose tail-coat of tweed, cut very square. From his habit of never removing his bowler hat in the house even at meals, the common belief was that he slept in it, and he punctuated his sentences when he spoke, and marked his alternate strides when he walked, by tremendously loud cracks of a bamboo cane against a gaitered leg. It was his frequent habit when he desired emphasis to bless what he termed his "eighteen stun proper," and he caused Rollo to giggle by his trick of calling a horse "a norse." Mr. Hannaford received his visitors by raising his hat as far from his head as any one had ever seen it, by giving three terrific cracks of his cane against his leg, and by extending to Rollo and Percival in turn a hand of the size of a small shoulder of mutton. "Well, you've come to the right place for a little 'orse, me lord, bless my eighteen stun proper if you haven't," Mr. Hannaford declared. "And 'll want a proper little 'orse for your lordship's son, moreover," continued Mr. Hannaford, after another tremendous leg-and-cane crack and looking admiringly at Percival. Percival was quick with the correction. "Oh, I'm not his son. I'm only a little boy, you know. I can ride, though, because sometimes I pretend I'm a horse all day long; so I should like to know what you think of that?" Mr. Hannaford was hugely delighted, and having begged his lordship's pardon for the mistake, gave it as his deliberate opinion that a young gentleman who could pretend he was a norse all day long was a Pocket Marvel. The Pocket Marvel performed a prance or two in order to show that this estimate of him was well merited, and they proceeded to the stables, Mr. Hannaford, as they walked, making clear, to the tune of astonishing leg-and-cane cracks, the reasons why the right place for a little 'orse had been selected by his lordship. "There's money in little 'orses," said Mr. Hannaford. (Crack!) "And I'm one of the few that know it." (Crack!) He broke off, stared towards the house, face changing from its superb red to astonishing purple, and to a distant figure roared "Garge!" in a voice like a clap of thunder. "Garge! Fetch that pig out of the flower beds! You want my stick about your back, Garge; bless my eighteen stun proper if you don't."