At first he had liked Alan Porter, with no tremendous amount of
unbending; now, because of the interest Allis had excited in him, the
liking began to take on a supervisory form, and it was not without a
touch of irritation in his voice that Alan informed his sister that he
had acquired a second father, and with juvenile malignity attributed the
incumbrance to her seductive influence.
With all these cross purposes at work it can be readily understood that
Mortimer's visits to Ringwood were not exactly rose-leaved. In truth,
the actors were all too conventionally honest, too unsocialized, to
subvert their underlying motives. Allis, with her fine intuition, would
have unearthed Mortimer's disapprobation of racing--though he awkwardly
strove to hide it--even if Alan had not enlarged upon this point. This
knowledge constrained the girl, even drove her into rebellion. She took
his misunderstanding as a fault, almost as a weakness, and shocked the
young man with carefully prepared racing expressions; reveled with
strange abandon in talks of gallops, and trials, and work-outs, and
breathers; threw ironmouthed horses, pullers, skates, and divers other
equine wonders at his head until he revolted in sullen irritation.
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