"Did you enjoy your drive in the new buggy, Sergeant?" asked the
Colonel.

"No, sir," replied the Sergeant, earnestly, "this has been a awful
Christmas day to me. I didn't think as Missis McGillicuddy would play
me such a low trick as to give me the buggy and then make me ride in
it. She said as the milkman told her he had owned the mare fir
thirteen years, and she wasn't young when he bought her; but I reminded
her as thirteen was a unlucky number. But Missis McGillicuddy acted
heartless and give orders as I was to mount that buggy. I pleadid with
her, sir, not to risk my life, for the sake of the eight children, even
if she didn't have no love or affection for me. I reminded her as
she'd stand a divil of a chanst of gettin' married again, havin' all
them eight children. I told her the aviation orficer had promised to
take me flyin' with him to-morrow mornin', and if I lost my life in a
wheeled vehicle there'd be no more flyin' fir me because I don't look
to be a angel immediate I get into the next world. All she says to me
was, like she was a Sergeant Major and I was a recruity, 'You get into
this buggy, Patrick McGillicuddy.' So, as orders is orders, sir, I got
in, and I stayed in until my fears of that horse's hind feet right
under nay nose got the better of my duty to Missis McGillicuddy, as my
superior orficer. I begun to feel hollow inside, like a man feels when
he's ordered into action and the artillery is ploughing up the ground
with shells. Then, sir, I mutinied. I jumped out of that damned
buggy--excuse me, sir--and I got on the back of the mare and felt jist
as safe as if I was riding old Corporal, the horse we gives the
recruits to ride. I've escaped the dangers of that buggy and there
won't be no vacancy in my grade yet awhile from ridin' in wheeled
vehicles. An I'm goin' flyin' tomorrow in a nice safe aeroplane that's
got a man hitched to it and not a horse. This ain't been no merry