“I should be very sorry to have you think for a moment that I would—er—so far forget myself,” he went on fatuously. “What I had in mind was an exchange of seats with him. I thought it would be pleasanter for you; that is, I mean, pleasanter for—” He stopped short, seeing nothing but a more hopeless involvement ahead; also because he saw signals of distress or of mirth flying in the brown eyes.
“Oh, please!” she protested in mock humility. “Do leave my vanity just the tiniest little cranny to creep out of, Mr. Winton. I'll promise to be good and not bore you too desperately.”
At this, as you would imagine, the pit of utter self-abasement yawned for Winton, and he plunged headlong, holding the bill of fare wrong side up when the waiter asked for his dinner order, and otherwise demeaning himself like a man taken at a hopeless disadvantage. She took pity on him.
“But let's ignore Mr. Adams,” she went on sweetly. “I am much more interested in this,” touching the bill of fare. “Will you order for me, please? I like—”
When she had finished the list of her likings, Winton was able to smile at his lapse into the primitive, and gave the dinner order for two with a fair degree of coherence. After that they got on better. Winton knew Boston, and, next to the weather, Boston was the safest and most fruitful of the commonplaces. Nevertheless, it was not immortal; and Winton was just beginning to cast about for some other safe riding road for the shallop of small talk when Miss Carteret sent it adrift with malice aforethought.
It was somewhere between the entrees and the fruit, and the point of departure was Boston art.
“Speaking of art, Mr. Winton, will you tell me how you came to think of sketching in the mountains of Colorado at this time of year? I should think the cold would be positively prohibitive of anything like that.”
Winton stared—open-mouthed, it is to be feared.
“I—I beg your pardon,” he stammered, with the inflection which takes its pitch from blank bewilderment.
Miss Virginia was happy. Dilettante he might be, and an unhumbled man of the world as well; but, to use the Reverend Billy's phrase, she could make him “sit up.”