“Accordin’ to my way of thinkin’, Mr. Broussard is the best rider 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 themselves with other charming young ladies of the post.  Next to Anita, the best rider was Sally Harlow, the daughter of her who had been Sally Carteret.  Mrs. Harlow followed the example of Mrs. Fortescue, whose bridesmaid she had been, and had married within a year the dashing young officer with whom she “stood up” at Mrs. Fortescue’s wedding.  Mrs. Harlow, like Mrs. Fortescue, showed a marked inability to grow old and was as gay and drank the wine of life as joyously as did her daughter, Sally the Second.