“You wouldn’t mind?” echoed Durham, indignantly. “You’d let him make love to her?”
A twinkling smile lit up Maynard’s old eyes.
“He couldn’t make love!” he answered. “He wouldn’t know how! And I’d let him try, because he’d make such a fool of himself! And Sylvia is the very girl to show him his folly and take the conceit out of him! That would do him good! Clever as he is there’s no doubt he’s conceited. It wouldn’t hurt him to put his pride down a peg or two!”
“Maynard,” said Durham, solemnly, “you might as soon detach the bones from a live herring as get the conceit out of that Professor of yours! Why, man, his self-satisfaction is his life!—his blood, his veins, his marrow!—and if he proposed to your girl and she refused him, it would make no more effect on him than the pressure of a finger-nail on a fossil! He would merely say that she is a fool, and he the wise man and hero of a lucky escape!”
Dr. Maynard laughed. The conversation with his American friend had roused and amused him—his interest was awakened by the movement of the little romance playing round the attractive personality of his pretty daughter, and he felt brighter, better and younger (because less absorbed in himself) than he had for many a long day.
“Very likely you are right!” he said. “We’ll leave it all at that—and—to Sylvia! She’ll settle the matter better than either you or I! And I—I—think she was fond of your son Jack!”
“Is fond,” corrected Durham. “Not was—is!”
“Is!” agreed Maynard, gently. “And if she is fond of Jack she’s not likely to change her mind—in his absence.”
Durham looked at him steadily.
“That’s true!” he said. “She’s a loyal little soul—she’s not likely to change. Not likely! Unless—”