"I wouldn't feel right to accept more."

"Try it, ma'am, for a little while. Mebbe it won't bother you so much after you get used to it. Allie likes you."

"And I--I _am_ interested in her. She is progressing, too; in fact, I have never seen anyone learn more rapidly. But--she is so unusual.

Still, perhaps I _am_ the one--perhaps it is my duty, under the circ.u.mstances--"

With this disposition to compromise the father had little difficulty in dealing, so the daily routine was continued. Allie applied herself to the cultivation of the ordinary social niceties with the same zeal that she followed her studies and her physical exercises. Fortunately these exercises afforded outlet for the impatience and the scorn that she felt for herself. Otherwise there would have been no living with her.

As it was she showed herself no mercy. Daylight found her stirring, her Swedish drill she took with a vigor that fairly shook the floor, and, having finished this, she donned sweater and boots and went for a swift walk over the hills. At this hour she had the roads to herself and was glad of it, for she felt ridiculous. At breakfast, although she had a ravenous appet.i.te, she ate sparingly. The day was spent in reading aloud, in lessons in deportment, voice modulation, conversation, and the like; in learning how to enter and how to leave a room, how to behave at a tea or a reception, how to accept and how to make an introduction, how to walk, how to sit, how to rise. Allie did sums in arithmetic, she studied grammar and geography and penmanship--in short, she took an intensified common-school course. Here was where her tutoress had trouble, for when the girl's brain became weary or confused she relieved her baffled rage in her most natural way, the while Mrs. Ring stopped her ears and moaned. It was a regimen that no ordinary woman could have endured; it would have taxed the strength of an athlete.

Late in the afternoon Allie went riding, and here was one accomplishment in which she required no coaching. Frequently she vented her spite upon her horse, and more than once she brought it home with its mouth bleeding and its flanks white with lather. She rode with a magnificent recklessness that finally caused comment among the other guests.

Allie was sitting alone in her room one evening, f.a.gged out from a hard day. Some people were talking on the veranda outside her window, and she heard one say:

"The girl can look really stunning."

"Exactly. I don't understand where she gets her looks, for her parents are--impossible. Wouldn't you _know_ what they were?"

Allie needed no clearer indication of who was under discussion.

Instinctive resentment at the reference to her father and mother was followed by amazement, delight, at the compliment to herself--the first she had ever received. She leaned forward, straining to hear more. What mattered it how these contemptuous outsiders referred to her parents?

They agreed that she was "stunning," which was their way of saying that she was pretty, nay, more--beautiful, perhaps.

"She's a glorious rider," the first speaker was saying. "She pa.s.sed me the other day, going like sin, with her face blazing and that big, lively chestnut running flat. The way she took that curve above the Devil's Slide brought my heart into my mouth."

The breathless eavesdropper felt a hot wave of delight pour over her, her very flesh seemed to ripple like the fur of a cat when it is stroked.

"Oh, she's a picture, mounted! Seems to have complete confidence in herself; and the strength of a giantess, too. But--my G.o.d! when she's on her feet! And have you heard her talk?" Evidently the other speaker had, for there came the sound of low laughter, a sound that stabbed Allie Briskow like a bayonet and left her white and furious. She sat motionless for a long time, and something told her that as long as she lived she would never forget, never forgive, that laughter.

She was unusually silent and somber for the next three or four days; she went through her exercises without vim; at her studies she was both stupid and sullen. When Mrs. Ring's patience was exhausted and her frayed nerves finally gave out, Allie rounded upon her with a violence unparalleled. Those previous exhibitions of temper were tame as compared with this one; the girl spat scorn and bitterness and hatred; she became a volcano in active eruption.

In a panic Mrs. Ring sought out Gus Briskow and again resigned. By this time, however, the novelty of her resignation had largely worn off, for seldom did more than two weeks elapse without a hysterical threat to quit. But this one required more than the usual amount of persuasion, and it was not without long and patient pleading, coupled with the periodical raise, that the father induced her to change her mind. Gus told himself somberly that the price of Allegheny's education was mounting so rapidly that it might be the part of economy to take Mrs.

Ring in as a full partner in the Briskow oil wells. He decided, after some consideration, to wire Calvin Gray and offer to pay his traveling expenses if he would come to Burlington Notch for a few days.

CHAPTER XIV

One accomplishment that Allegheny mastered with gratifying ease was dancing. It came naturally to her, for both she and Buddy were full of music. At first she had been extremely self-conscious; Professor Delamater had found her to be as heavy as stone and as awkward as a bear; but later, as her embarra.s.sment became less painful, she relaxed.

She regained her power of speech, also, and in time she voiced an eager desire to learn all there was to learn.

Having quickly schooled her in the simpler forms of ballroom dancing, Delamater suggested a course in the deeper intricacies of fancy dancing.

"You're getting on," he told her, one day. "That last was splendid--top hole, absolutely."

Delamater, who was quite thoroughly American, affected at times an English turn to his conversation, believing that it gave him an air. It went particularly well, he thought, with light trousers, spats, and an afternoon coat cut close at the waist.

"Don't fool me," panted the red-faced Juno. "You must have iron feet."

"My word! Spoof you, indeed! Not for worlds, if you know what I mean? I shall expect to see you in the ballroom every evening."

But Allie's confidence forsook her at this. "I'd--be scared stiff.

Folks would laugh. They haven't got--haven't anything to do but laugh at other folks, and I don't like to be laughed at."

"Laugh at you! Fancy that! You're too modest." Delamater adopted the cooing note of a dove. "'Pon my word, you're too modest. If you could hear the things I hear--" He paused, not knowing exactly what to say he had heard, but his vagueness, the very eloquence of his hesitation, caused Allie's face to light up. This was the second compliment paid her since her arrival at the Notch, therefore when the phonograph resumed its melodious measures she yielded herself with abandon to the arms of her partner, and her red lips were parted, her somber eyes were shining. That day she began a course of exhibition dancing.

It was on that afternoon that Delamater had told the clerk of discovering Ma Briskow alone in the woods. There was an open golf tournament at the Notch, prominent amateurs and professionals were competing, and the hotel was crowded to its capacity with players, fashionable followers of the game and a small army of society reporters and sport writers. This being the height of the season, social doings at the resort were featured in all the large Eastern papers, for famous names were on the register and the hotel switch was jammed with private cars.

Allie Briskow was in one of her trying moods to-day, for the out-of-doors called to her. Sounds of laughter and gayety, strains of music, had distracted her from her studies, her monotonous routine had become hopelessly unbearable all at once. From her window she could see young people, hear young voices, and envy flamed in her soul. Those girls were her age; those men, easy, immaculate, different from anything she had ever seen--except Calvin Gray--they, too, were young and they courted those girls. Contemplation of the chattering throngs showed Allie more clearly than ever the chasm separating her from these people, and reawakened in her that black resentment which at times made her so difficult to manage. She was thankful that her mother had disappeared and that her father was at the livery stable; she hoped they would stay away all day. At least, they were safe from ridicule.

She wondered if she might not induce them to dine in their rooms that evening, and thus spare herself the embarra.s.sment she always suffered when she accompanied them into the public dining room.

It seemed to her that whenever they went to dinner--Gus in his baggy pepper-and-salt sack suit, his loose, lay-down collar, and his wide-toed shoes, Ma in one of her giddy, gaudy dinner dresses--it seemed as if the entire a.s.semblage was stricken dumb and as if every eye was turned upon them in mockery and amus.e.m.e.nt. Even the waiters, Allie felt sure, noted the difference between the Briskows and the other guests, and only with difficulty concealed their contempt.

The occasional presence of Mrs. Ring, handsome, dignified, unruffled, intensified that contrast and fairly shouted the humiliating announcement that here were three n.o.bodies who wanted to be somebodies, but never could.

Invariably when they went out in public together Mrs. Ring made Allie feel as if she belonged to a lower, cruder order of animal life; as if she were an inhabitant of another sphere. And yet, Mrs. Ring was poor; she worked for wages! Allie could not understand this phenomenon; thought of it now caused her resentment to kindle.

Of course it was the lot of the hapless tutoress to select such a moment as this in which to sweetly chide the girl for some lapse of form. Allie exploded. She reduced the elder woman to tears, then, ashamed of herself, she flung blindly out of the room, crashing the door to behind her. She decided to dance her anger away. It was some consolation to know that she could dance as well, or better, than those slim and pampered beauties outside her window. Some consolation, even though she never expected to have a chance of proving it.

Delamater was especially agreeable to-day, more than usually nattering.

Not for some time did his scholar become conscious of the subtle change in his demeanor, and even then its significance awoke only a shadowy contentment. Allie hated herself too thoroughly to-day to believe that anybody could really approve of her. As for him, he entirely misconstrued the meaning of her silent acceptance of his flattery.

They had become well acquainted by now and were on a basis of easy familiarity, nevertheless it came as a shock to Allie to be called by her first name-such a shock that she missed a step and trod on Delamater's foot. They came to a pause.

The dancing master was tall and slim, his face was on a level with hers, and now he smiled into it, saying, "My mistake, my dear."

"I--reckon it was." The girl's eyes were glowing queerly, and the man was amused at her evident agitation. His first word had thrown the poor thing into a flurry.

They began to dance again, and, after a moment, with a gently rising inflection, Delamater murmured, "You heard what I called you?" He approved of the sachet that Allie used, and he became acutely conscious of the jewels resting in the palm of his left hand. The girl was rich and she was--different, unusual. Ever since she had learned to yield herself to his embrace, he had been conscious of her strong physical attraction, and now it got the better of him. "You don't care?" he said, with his lips close to her ear.

"Humph! I'm not caring for anything or anybody to-day."

"Somebody has hurt my little girl."

Allie threw back her head and stared at him with quick suspicion. "Your little girl?" she repeated.

It is the lot of any man in the heat of his desire to make mistakes, and Delamater erred gravely at this moment. He kissed Allie. Without warning he kissed her full and fair upon her red, half-open lips.

For the briefest instant of amazement the two stood motionless in the middle of the polished floor while the phonograph brayed on; then Allie shook herself free of her partner, and in the same movement she smote him a mighty slap that sent him reeling. Delamater saw stars. The constellation of Orion gleamed in dazzling splendor within his tightly shut lids; he collided with a chair and went sprawling.

With a cry he scrambled to his feet. "What the h.e.l.l--?" he growled, savagely.

Allie's face was chalky. Breathlessly, curiously she inquired, "Wha'd you do that for?"

"What did I _do_ it for? Say! You ought to be complimented--tickled to death." Delamater rubbed his cheek and glared at her. "By G.o.d! I wish you were a man. Oh, don't worry, I won't touch you again! Who the h.e.l.l would, after that?" Allie opened her lips to speak, but he ran on more angrily as the pain bit into him. "Thought I meant it, eh? Why, you lumbering ox--"

"Then you ain't--in love with me or--or anything?"

"_Love_?" The speaker uttered an unpleasant sound indicative of scorn.

"Wake up, sister! What d'you take me for? Why, your mother talks bird talk, and your dad lives in a box stall and eats oats with his knife!