soon our talk was fluent though broken, as we moved sometimes at a trot
and often faster. In stolen moments I scanned him with the jealousy of
my youth. Five feet, ten; humph! I was five, nine and a thirty-second.
In weight he looked to be just what I always had in mind in those
prayers without words with which I mounted every pair of commissary
scales I came to. The play of his form as our smooth-gaited horses sped
through the flecking shades was worth watching for its stanch and supple
grace. Alike below the saddle and above it he was as light as a leaf and
as firm as a lance. I had long yearned to own a pair of shoulders not
too square for beauty nor too sloping for strength, and lo, here they
were, not mine, but his. No matter; the slender mustache he sported he
was welcome to, I had shaved off nearly as good a one; wished now I
hadn't. As once or twice he lifted his kepi to the warm breeze I took
new despair from the soft locks of darkest chestnut that lay on his head
in manly order, ready enough to curl but waiving the privilege.

"Cock-a-doodle-doo," thought I; "if those are not the same
hundred-dollar boots I saw yesterday morning, at least they are their
first cousins!"



VII


A PLAGUE ON NAMES!

Once more I measured my man. Celerity, valor, endurance, they were his
iridescent neck and tail feathers. On a certain piece of road where we
went more slowly I mentioned abruptly my clerkship under Major Harper