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Rh she had brought, and her floppy straw hat had a big lilac bow. She began to tell Claude about her father’s several attacks of erysipelas. He listened but absently. He would never have believed that Enid, with her severe notions of decorum, would come into his room and sit with him like this. He noticed that his mother was quite as much astonished as he. She hovered about the visitor for a few moments, and then, seeing that Enid was quite at her ease, went downstairs to her work. Claude wished that Enid would not talk at all, but would sit there and let him look at her. The sunshine she had let into the room, and her tranquil, fragrant presence, soothed him. Presently he realized that she was asking him something.

“What is it, Enid? The medicine they give me makes me stupid. I don’t catch things.”

“I was asking whether you play chess.”

“Very badly.”

“Father says I play passably well. When you are better you must let me bring 1 up my ivory chessmen that Carrie sent me from China. They are beautifully carved. And now it’s time for me to go.”

She rose and patted his hand, telling him he must not be foolish about seeing people. “I didn’t know you were so vain. Bandages are as becoming to you as they are to anybody. Shall I pull the dark blind again for you?”

“Yes, please. There won’t be anything to look at now.”

“Why, Claude, you are getting to be quite a ladies’ man!”

Something in the way Enid said this made him wince a little. He felt his burning face grow a shade warmer. Even after she went downstairs he kept wishing she had not said that.