and apologized gracefully to the
chaplain, assuring him that Birdseye was the best disposed horse in the
world, except when she was in a temper and her temper was merely
bashfulness and stage fright.

"Whatever it is," answered Chaplain Brown, smiling while he rubbed a
bruised shin, "it hurts. It hurts pretty badly, too."

Next, Mrs. Fortescue apologized profusely to the troopers who had been
knocked down by the bashful Birdseye. After their kind, they preferred
a kicker to a non-kicker, and accepted, with delighted grins, Mrs.
Fortescue's sweet words. But it was another thing when Mrs. Fortescue
had to face a frowning husband.

Mrs. Fortescue tripped into the Colonel's office, and going up to
Colonel Fortescue gave him two soft kisses and a lovely smile, and this
is what she got in return, in the Colonel's parade-ground voice:

"I supposed I had made myself perfectly clear, Elizabeth, in regard to
your riding that kicking mare."

"But, darling," replied Mrs. Fortescue, "I thought you wouldn't mind.
And please don't call me Elizabeth. It breaks my heart."

"I must ask--in fact, insist--that you shall not ride that mare again,"
answered the Colonel sternly, without taking any notice of Mrs.
Fortescue's breaking heart.

"And her name is Birdseye," plaintively responded Mrs. Fortescue.
"Don't you remember, the first horse you ever put me on was your first
Birdseye."

Mrs. Fortescue accompanied this information with a little pinch of the
Colonel's ear. The Colonel remained coldly unresponsive; he had
steeled his heart; the kisses and the pinch were hard to resist, but
hardest of all the look of wide-eyed innocence in the dark eyes
uplifted to his. Mrs. Fortescue would never see forty again, and her
rich hair had a wide streak of silver running from her right temple;
but she was the same Betty Beverley of twenty years before. The Betty
Beverleys of this world are dowered with immortal youth and change but
little, even under strange stars.

Mrs. Fortescue had never in her life been at the end of her resources
for placating men. She withdrew her arms from about her husband's
neck, and running lightly into the drawing-room took the After-Clap
from Kettle's arms, and, throwing him pick-a-back on her shoulders,
tripped with her beautiful man-child into the Colonel's office. Mrs.
Fortescue and the baby were the only persons who ever took liberties
with Colonel Fortescue.

The baby, charmed with his father's u