ingwood. An afternoon is not exactly like an
evening in the matter of entertaining a guest; something must be done;
cigars, or music, or small chatter are insufficient. If one is on
the western slope of life's Sierra perhaps a nap may kill the time
profitably enough, but this was a case where a young man had to
be entertained, a young man difficult of entertainment under the
circumstances.

Alan had some barbarous expedition of juvenile interest on hand; the
unearthing of a woodchuck, or it might have been a groundhog, in a back
field; but Allis would not become a party to the destruction of animal
life for the sport of the thing. She had a much better programme
mapped out for Mortimer. Some way she felt that if he could see
the thoroughbred horses in their stalls, could come to know them
individually, casually though it might be, he would perhaps catch a
glimmer of their beautiful characters. So she asked Mr. Mortimer to go
and have a look at her pets. Alan would none of it; he was off to his
woodchuck or groundhog.

"I'm glad you don't want to go and kill anything," she said, turning
gratefully to Mortimer when he refused Alan's invitation, saying that
he preferred to look at the horses. "I'll show you Diablo, and Lucretia,
and Lauzanne the Despised--he's my horse, and I'm to win a big race
with him next year. Gaynor is down at the stables; and I'll give you a
tip"-Mortimer winced--"if you want to stand well in with Mike, let him
suspect that you're fond of horses."

At the stable door they met Mike Gaynor. Mike usually vacillated between
a condition of chronic anger at somebody or something, and an Irish
drollery that made people who were sick at heart laugh. Allis was as
familiar with his moods as she was with the phases of Lauzanne's temper.
On Mike's face was a map of disaster; the disaster might be trivial or
great. That something was wrong the girl knew, but whether it was that a
valuable horse was dead, or that a mouse had eaten a hole in a grain
bag she could only discover by questioning Gaynor, for there were never
degrees of expressed emotion in Mike's facile countenance; either a deep
scowl or a broad grin were the two normal conditions.

"What's the matter, Mike?" questioned Allis.

"Mather, is it?" began Gaynor, "it's just this, Miss Allis; if yer
father thinks I'm goin' to stand by an' see good colts spiled in their
timper just because a rapscallion b'y has got the evil intints av ould
Nick himself