mistress of two
pleasant rooms and a mite of a studio.

OLD HANNIBAL.

BY WILLIAM O. STODDARD.

"No, mother," said Colonel Dunway to his wife, at the breakfast table,
"I shall ride the black colt on parade to-day. Hannibal is too fat and
too old."

"Too old? He and Barry are just of an age."

"And Barry's only a little colt yet? Well, you may bring him and Prue
out to the grand review in the afternoon, but I guess I'll ride the
black this morning. You can put Hannibal in the carry-all. Perhaps he'd
like to take a look again at a regiment of troops in line."

Barry and Prue listened with all their ears.

They knew there was to be a grand parade of soldiers that day, and they
were prouder than they knew how to tell of the fact that their father
was to wear a uniform, and ride a horse, and give orders to some of the
men.

"Prue," said Barry, "father's going to 'spect them."

"_In_-speck them," whispered Prue, correcting him. "Nobody else knows
how."

That might be, for Colonel Dunway had been an officer of the regular
army, and he was now Colonel of a regiment of militia; but there was one
thing he had said that puzzled Barry and Prue dreadfully.

"Barry," said Prue, after breakfast, "is Nibble old?"

"Father says he is."

"And he said he was fat."

"Dr. Barnes is old, and he's fat."

"But his head's bare."

"Nibble isn't bald, and he isn't gray either."

"He's brown."

Mrs. Dunway had told the exact truth about Hannibal, or Nibble, as the
children called him. He and Barry were just of an age, and he had been a
mere two-year-old colt when Prue was a baby in her cradle.

It was after that that Colonel Dunway had taken Hannibal with him to the
army, and brought him home again.

He had been a war-horse, the Colonel said, and so it would not do to
turn him into a plough-horse, and the consequence was that Nibble did
not have enough work to do, and he grew fat too fast.

Yet he and Barry were only nine years old apiece. That made eighteen
years between them; and if you added seven years for Prue, it would only
have made twenty-five, and everybody knows that is not very old, if you
had given them all to Hannibal.

Barry and Prue would have given him almost anything they had, for he was
a great friend and crony of theirs.

"Prue," said Barry, "let's go out to the barn. I've got an apple."

"He can have my bun."

What there was left of it, that meant, for Prue's little white teeth had
be