"Oh no! And she repents quickly enough. As a matter of fact, I am afraid she is overdoing her studies, but there's no holding her back."
"You're kinda worked up, Miz' Ring. Mebbe I can make it pleasanter for you."
"In what way, may I ask?"
"Well, by payin' you more."
"You are generous. The salary we agreed upon isn't low."
"Yes'm—No, ma'am!"
"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 circumstances—"
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 appetite, 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.