“Are you going to sit in at my table?” she asked. Then with real sincerity, “I’d be glad.”
But again McLagan shook his head.
“No, Claire,” he said reflectively. “I got other notions being here to-night. Besides,” he added with a smile, “my bank roll isn’t equal to better than table-stakes,’ and that’s no sort of use when you get busy. I’ll just sit around awhile. There’s Jubilee yearning to lighten your wad. He sat right in on the jump when you came along, and I don’t fancy he’ll squeal when you’re through with him. No, I’m waiting on Victor Burns, and one or two boys. I can do business here, and—I’ve pleased Max coming.”
Claire glanced round at her table and her eyes were no longer smiling. Her table had filled with the men with whom she was accustomed to play, and they were waiting on her pleasure.
“Why must you please Max?” she asked a little sharply. “Why is it all of you men reckon to please Max?” Suddenly she lowered her voice and inclined towards him. “He’s gone off to the dance hall so I don’t mind. I’m getting to hate him like I used to hate Booker months back. That play of his just now with his light. It sickened me. It surely did, Ivor. And he’s getting like a tame cat. And I hate cats. Give me a dog all the time, and a good, rough, fighting trail husky at that.”
McLagan nodded. His eyes were smiling inscrutably.
“Don’t worry with him,” he said. “Don’t worry with any feller. Max has his uses, which don’t need to concern you. But your boys are looking gun-play my way.”
Claire laughed. The man was dismissing her. This big, burly, plain creature who had persistently asked her to marry him. Just for a moment a sense of pique disturbed her, but it passed immediately, lost in her laugh. There was no other man in that room would have done the same. She nodded at him and took her dismissal.
“Swell clothes hide up all sorts of things, I guess,” she cried, as she moved away, “but it’s queer how the rough in a man can leak through. I guess those boys at the table won’t be in such a hurry to lose me.”