“Tell me about it,” she said, yet turned her head away from her eager historian.

Corporal Shorter’s words were addressed to the smallest pink ear he had ever seen except on a baby, but he was only dimly conscious of that.  He was full of a man’s pride in a man’s deed.

“Well, it was like this,” he recited.  “Gunter’s horse bolted—­Dick Gunter’s in the South African Horse same as Colonel Byng—­his lot.  Old Gunter’s horse gits away with him into the wide open.  I s’pose there’d been a hunderd Boers firing at the runaway for three minutes, and at last off comes Gunter.  He don’t stir for a minute or more, then we see him pick himself up a bit quick, but settle back again.  And while we was lookin’ and tossin’ pennies like as to his chances out there, a grey New Zealand mare nips out across the veld stretchin’ every string.  We knowed her all right, that grey mare—­a regular Mrs. Mephisto, w’ich belongs to Colonel Byng.  Do the Boojers fire at him?  Don’t they!  We could see the spots of dust where the bullets struck, spittin’, spittin’, spittin’, and Lord knows how many hunderd more there was that didn’t hit the ground.  An’ the grey mare gets there.  As cool as a granadillar, down drops Colonel Byng beside old Gunter; down goes the grey mare—­Colonel Byng had taught her that trick, like the Roosian Cossack hosses.  Then up on her rolls old Gunter, an’ up goes Colonel Byng, and the grey mare switchin’ her bobtail, as if she was havin’ a bit of mealies in the middle o’ the day.  But when they was both on, then the band begun to play.  Men was fightin’ of course, but it looked as if the whole smash stopped to see what the end would be.  It was a real pretty race, an’ the grey mare takin’ it as free as if she was carryin’ a little bit of a pipkin like me instead of twenty-six stone.  She’s a flower, that grey mare!  Once she stumbled, an’ we knowed it wasn’t an ant-bear’s hole she’d found in the veld, and that she’d been hurt.  But they know, them hosses, that they must do as their Baases do; and they fight right on.  She come home with the two all right.  She switched round a corner and over a nose of land where that crossfire couldn’t hit the lot; an’ there was the three of ’em at ‘ome for a cup o’ tea.  Why, ma’am, that done the army as much good to-day, that little go-to-the-devil, you mud-suckers! as though we’d got Schuster’s Hill.  ’Twas what we needed—­an’ we got it.  It took our eyes off the nasty little fact that half of a regiment was down, an’ the other half with their job not done as it was ordered.  It made the S.A.’s and the Lynchesters and the Gessex lot laugh.  Old Gunter’s all right.  He’s in the Stay Awhile now.  You’ll be sure to see him.  And Colonel Byng’s all right, too, except a little bit o’ splinter—­”

“A bit of splinter—­” Her voice was almost peremptory.