“Men dislike pursuit, dear. That is their peculiar prerogative. I prefer to be dear to Dan Pritchard, as his closest friend, rather than to disturb him as a prospective wife. Dan is old-fashioned, quite dignified, idealistic, altruistic, artistic, and as shy and retiring as a rabbit. I’m certain he isn’t the least bit interested in your plans to alter his scheme of existence by adding a wife to it.”
“You’d marry Dan Pritchard tomorrow if he asked you today.”
“Perhaps,” Maisie agreed. “However, I shall not pursue him nor shall I hurl myself at him. I prefer to operate on the principle that, after all, I may prove more or less eligible myself!”
“You desire to be pursued, I see.”
“What woman does not—by the right man?”
“Then is Dan Pritchard the right man?”
“No woman could really answer such a question truthfully until after she had been married to Dan. I have never given much thought to Dan as a matrimonial possibility.”
“That is an admission that you have at least given him some thought, Maisie.”
“Of course, silly. What is a girl to think when a man’s freakish humor dictates that he shall develop all of the outward evidences of a sentimental interest one week and shrink from exhibiting the slightest evidence of it a week later? Sometimes I think that Dan is a habit with me; sometimes I’m quite certain I am a habit with him. I think I was twelve years old when Dan took me to a vaudeville show one Saturday afternoon. I remember I held his hand all through the show and he fed me so much candy I was ill. However, he is a pleasant and delightful habit to me, and I am not anxious to renounce him; I hope he feels the same toward me. By the way, I have an engagement with him this morning. I must run along and dress.”
She left her aunt gazing speculatively after her. Mrs. Casson shook her head and sighed. “It’s her frightful spirit of independence,” she soliloquized. “She scares him away. I just know it. And I do wish I knew what to do about it.”