rley was not known for any of these things. She was celebrated
for fights with chaplains and sanitary inspectors, and for an inability
to give in to authority unless authority knew what it was about. She had
never once tried to please, which is the foundation of charm. Perhaps it
would have been a useless effort, for she was not born to please. She
was born to get things done.
After Miss Marley had talked to Winn for an hour, she decided to get him
to join the Bandy Club. He was the kind of man who must do something,
and it was obviously better that he should not again tempt fate by
riding the Cresta from Church Leap without practice. This course became
clearer to Miss Marley when she discovered that Winn had come up for his
health.
"Of course a fellow who wasn't seedy wouldn't have made an ass of
himself over riding the Cresta," Winn explained, eyeing her
thoughtfully.
He must have got somehow off his toboggan on to the snow, and he had no
recollection at all of getting there. Miss Marley said nothing to
enlighten him further. She merely suggested bandy. After dinner she
introduced Winn to the captain of the St. Moritz team, and at three
o'clock the next afternoon she watched him play in a practice-match.
Winn played with a concentrated viciousness which assured her of two
things: he would be an acquisition to the team, and if he felt as badly
as all that, it was just as well to get some of it worked off on
anything as unresponsive as a ball.
After this Miss Marley let him alone. She considered this the chief
factor in assisting the lives of others; and for nearly two hours a day,
while he was playing bandy, Winn succeeded in not remembering Claire.
CHAPTER XXII
Winn's way of playing bandy was to play as if there wasn't any ice. In
the first few practices it had the disadvantage of a constant series of
falls, generally upon the back of his head; but he soon developed an
increasing capacity of balance and an intensity of speed. He became the
quickest forward the St. Moritz team had ever possessed.
When he was following the ball he took up his feet and ran. The hard
clash of the skates, the determined onrush of the broad-built,
implacable figure, were terrible to withstand. What was to be done
against a man who didn't skate, but tore, who fell upon a ball as a
terrier plunges, eyeless and intent, into a rat-hole? The personal
safety of himself or others never occurred to Winn. He remembered
noth
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