Like other ladies, she could never understand
exaggerated preserving, nor why men who loved sport should care to
have game multiplied and tamed so as apparently to spoil all the zest
of the chase; but she had let Allen and his uncle do what ever they
told her was right by the preserves, except shutting up the park and
all the footpaths. Colonel Brownlow, whose sporting instincts were
those of a former generation, was quite satisfied; Allen never would
be so; and it was one of the few bones of contention in the family.
For Allen was walking through Oxford in a quiet, amiable way, not
troubling himself more about study than to secure himself from an
ignominious pluck, and doing whatever was supposed to be "good form."
His brother accused him of carrying his idolatry of "good form" to a
snobbish extent, but Allen could carry it out so naturally that no
one could have suspected that he had not been to the manner born. If
he did appreciate the society of people with handles to their names,
he comported himself among them as their easy equal; and he was so
lavish as to be a very popular man. He had no vicious tastes or
tendencies, and was too gentlemanly and quiet ever to come into
collision with the authorities. At home, except when his notions of
"good form" were at variance with strong opinions of his mother's,
nothing could be more chivalrously deferential than his whole
demeanour to her; and the worst that could be said of him was that he
managed to waste a large amount of time and money with very little to
show for it.
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