"So then I gave him Fatty's well-known speech about the Idle Rich.
"And he said, 'Oh! If that's your way of thinkin' there's a chance for all of us. Well, miss, there's a empty chair in my parlour and a seat be'ind the cash desk.' I call that a proposal."
"A most definite and unequivocal proposal," I agreed. "What did you say next?"
"Oh," said James, "there was nothing else of importance. We got off on to the subject of Carlsbad plums: they were beauties, but too dear. He wouldn't reduce them."
"Pooh!" I cried. "And he calls himself a lover!"
"All men aren't like Baffin and other people, thank goodness," said James disdainfully. "Mr. Grimsdick thinks about the future. But I'd rather go in for rats, I think. There's Baffin, for instance: he never shuts a door after him."
"Rats don't either," I submitted.
"But cats don't open them," argued James, not without logic. "And then there's always having to be at home on the second Tuesday. Really, I can't decide about my future at all. Most girls haven't any difficulties, because they can make up their minds to be nurses and relieve the sufferings of the poor. But I've been brought up to that sort of thing, and it bores me. Of course, you can always get an opium-eater, or drunkard, or something, and devote your life to reforming him. But then, again, they always smell of it. Really, it's very hard. And Baffin's so irritable. Look at the way men fuss over trifles. And if you get one who is clean and not fussy, and not a grocer, and decently young, he is sure to be ugly and a bore."
I said, "You are referring now, I suppose, to Boag, the Conative Meliorist?"
"No," replied James. "Mr. Boag is a bore, but he isn't downright ugly. As a matter of fact, I was thinking of you."