"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, thin he's mistook, that's all.
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