“How can you possibly tell?” Winn asked, with a short laugh. “However, I’ll get your brother, and if you really don’t mind, I’ll come back with him.”
Claire was quite sure that she could tell and that she didn’t mind.
The waiter came back in triumph, but Winn gave him a sharp look which extracted his triumph as neatly as experts extract a winkle with a pin. Maurice apologized with better manners than Winn had expected. He looked a terribly unlicked cub, and Winn found himself watching anxiously to see if Claire ate enough and the right things. He couldn’t, of course, say anything if she didn’t, but he found himself watching.
CHAPTER XII
Winn was from the first sure that it was perfectly all right. She wouldn’t notice him at all. She would merely look upon him as the man who was there when there were skates to clean, skis to oil, any handy little thing which the other fellows, being younger and not feeling so like an old nurse, might more easily overlook. Women liked fellows who cut a dash, and you couldn’t cut a dash and be an old nurse simultaneously. Winn clung to the simile of the old nurse. That was, after all the real truth of his feelings, not more than that, certainly not love. Love would make more of a figure in the world, not that it mattered what you called things provided you behaved decently. Only he was glad he was not in love.
He bought her flowers and chocolates, though he had a pang about the chocolates, not feeling quite sure that they were good for her; but flowers were safe.
He didn’t give her lilies — they seemed too self-consciously virginal, as if they wanted to rub it in — he gave her crimson roses, flowers that frankly enjoyed themselves and were as beautiful as they could be. They were like Claire herself. She never stopped to consider an attitude; she just went about flowering all over the place in a kind of perpetual fragrance.
She enjoyed herself so much that she simply hadn’t time to notice any one in particular. There were a dozen men always about her. She was so young and happy and unintentional that every one wanted to be with her. It was like sitting in the sun.
She never muddled things up or gave needless pain or cheated. That was what Winn liked about her. She was as fair as a judge without being anything like so grave.
They were all playing a game, and she was the leader. They would have let her break the rules if she had wanted to break them! but she wouldn’t have let herself.