Tattle-tales of Cupid

"She's a darling!" exclaimed the bay mare, between munches of the big red apple. "That's just what she is!" responded the off carriage-horse; and then, as part of his apple fell to the floor, he added fretfully: "I do wish, Lassie, that you girls wouldn't talk to a fellow when he's doing something! You've made me lose half my apple!" Old Reveille, with the prudence of twenty-eight years of experience, carefully deposited the unmasticated fraction of his apple beside an uneaten one in his manger before remarking reflectively: "She's a thoroughbred; but she's not the beauty her mother was at the same age." "Fie!" reproved one of the cobs: "how can you be so ungallant, when she always gives you an extra apple or piece of sugar?" "I call it shameful unfairness," growled the nigh horse of the pair. "She doesn't keep you up till two or three in the morning at balls and cotillions. She doesn't so much as ride you in the park, as she does Lassie or Bubbles. When you haven't done a step of work in six years, and spend your summers out in the pasture and your winters in a box-stall eating your head off, why should you get a double portion?" "Yes," whinnied Bubbles, plaintively; "and, what's more, she always kisses you." Reveille, who meantime had swallowed his first apple, looked up with a lofty smile of superiority. Then he slowly winked his off eye, remarked, "Naturally, you don't understand it," and fell to lipping his second apple caressingly, previous to the decisive crunch. "See if that doesn't drive the women wild," he cogitated, with a grin.

Dettagli