of
all the young orficers, sir," said McGillicuddy to the Colonel, in the
seclusion of the office. "Miss Anita, she'd look mighty pretty ridin'
with him, and Pretty Maid is as quiet as a lamb, sir, under the saddle.
I wouldn't answer for her in shafts, sir. Lord! There's nothin' too
devilish for a horse to do in shafts, or hitched to a pole. Missis
McGillicuddy can't see it in this light, judgin' from the Christmas
gift she's preparin' to give me."

"What is it, McGillicuddy?" asked the Colonel.

"It's a buggy, sir," answered the Sergeant despondently. "When I
wanted to enlist in the aviation corps that woman, sir, forbid it; she
said to me, 'Patrick McGillicuddy, I never did believe one word about
your bein' afraid av horses in wheeled vehicles.' An' ivery time I go
up in a flyin' machine, just for the fun av it, Missis McGillicuddy,
she says to me 'Patrick, if they was to lop off the f from that flyin'
machine, it would fit you to a t, bedad!' And that's the way she talks
to me when I spent seven dollars and fifty cents in gettin'
prognostications that I was goin' to marry a woman as would follow me
around like a poodle dog!"

"Women have a good many burrs in their convolutions," said the Colonel,
lighting a cigar and handing a handful to the Sergeant.

"They has, sir," replied McGillicuddy, accepting the cigars with
doleful gratitude, "and Missis McGillicuddy threatens to take me out in
that buggy on Christmas day. Well, sir, I've made my will and settled
up my account at the post trader's, and the aviation orficer has
promised to tak' me on a fly Christmas Eve morning. It may be the last
fly I'll take until I get wings, for I hardly expects, sir, to escape
the dangers of that buggy."

In talking with Mrs. Fortescue about the music ride Colonel Fortescue
dwelt upon the superiority of a quiet horse like Pretty Maid over a
constitutional kicker like Birdseye.

"It's the quiet ones, horses and women, that need watching," replied
Mrs. Fortescue, who had never been accused of being a quiet one.

For two weeks before Christmas the exhibition drill and music ride was
the great subject of attention at Fort Blizzard. The most interesting
part of the show was the music ride, in which the girls of the post
were to ride, each girl having her attendant cavalier. When it was
known that Anita was to ride with Broussard all the other
sublieutenants who had hoped to sit in Broussard's saddle promptly
provided them