Lover or Friend

by Rosa Nouchette Carey

'Michael, don't be absurd! I really mean what I say; it is perfectly glorious to say and do just what one likes. I mean to write a paper about it one day, and send it up to one of our leading periodicals.'

'"On the Old Maids of England," by "A Young Maid." I should like to read it; the result of three-and-twenty years' experience must be singularly beneficial to the world at large. Write it, my child, by all means; and I will correct the proof-sheets.'

'But why should not one be happy in one's own way?' persisted Audrey. 'You are older than I, Michael—I suppose a man of your age must have some experience—is it not something to be your own master, to go where you like and do what you like without being cross-questioned on your actions?'

'Oh, I will agree with you there!'

'People talk such nonsense about loneliness and all that sort of thing, as though one need be lonely in a whole world full of human creatures—as though an old maid cannot find plenty to love, and who will love her.'

'I don't know; I never tried. If I had a maiden aunt, perhaps——' murmured Michael.

'If you had, and she were a nice, kind-hearted woman, you would love her. I know it is the fashion to laugh at old maids, and make remarks on their funny little ways; but I never will find fault with them. Why, I shall be an old maid myself one day; but, all the same, I mean people to love me all my life long. What are you doing now?' rather sharply; for Michael had taken out his pocket-book and was writing the date.

'I thought I might like to remind you of this conversation one day. Is it the sixteenth or the seventeenth? Thank you, Kester—the seventeenth? There! it is written down.'

'You are very disagreeable, and I will not talk any more to you. I shall go and look for some stag's-horn moss instead;' and Audrey sprang up from her couch of heather and marched away, while Michael lay face downward, with his peaked cap drawn over his eyes, and watched her roaming over the moor.

Now, why was Audrey declaiming after this fashion? and why did she take it into her head to air all sorts of independent notions that quite shocked her mother? and why was she for ever drawing plans to herself of a life that should be solitary, and yet crowded with interests—whose keynote should be sympathy for her fellow-creatures and large-hearted work among them? and, above all, why did she want to persuade herself and Michael that this was the sort of life best fitted for her? But no one could answer these questions; so complex is the machinery of feminine nature, that perhaps Audrey herself would have been the last to be able to answer them.