James Cushat-Prinkly was a young man who had always had a settled<br>conviction that one of these days he would marry; up to the age of thirty-<br>four he had done nothing to justify that conviction. He liked and<br>admired a great many women collectively and dispassionately without<br>singling out one for especial matrimonial consideration, just as one<br>might admire the Alps without feeling that one wanted any particular peak<br>as one's own private property. His lack of initiative in this matter<br>aroused a certain amount of impatience among the sentimentally-minded<br>women-folk of his home circle; his mother, his sisters, an<br>aunt-in-residence, and two or three intimate matronly friends regarded<br>his dilatory approach to the married state with a disapproval that was<br>far from being inarticulate. His most innocent flirtations were watched<br>with the straining eagerness which a group of unexercised terriers<br>concentrates on the slightest movements of a human being who may be<br>reasonably considered likely to take them for a walk. No decent-souled<br>mortal can long resist the pleading of several pairs of walk-beseeching<br>dog-eyes; James Cushat-Prinkly was not sufficiently obstinate or<br>indifferent to home influences to disregard the obviously expressed wish<br>of his family that he should become enamoured of some nice marriageable<br>girl, and when his Uncle Jules departed this life and bequeathed him a<br>comfortable little legacy it really seemed the correct thing to do to set<br>about discovering some one to share it with him. The process of<br>discovery was carried on more by the force of suggestion and the weight<br>of public opinion than by any initiative of his own; a clear working<br>majority of his female relatives and the aforesaid matronly friends had<br>pitched on Joan Sebastable as the most suitable young woman in his range<br>of acquaintance to whom he might propose marriage, and James became<br>gradually accustomed to the idea that he and Joan would go together<br>through the prescribed stages of congratulations, present-receiving,<br>Norwegian or Mediterranean hotels, and eventual domesticity. It was<br>necessary, however to ask the lady what she thought about the matter; the<br>family had so far conducted and directed the flirtation with ability and<br>discretion, but the actual proposal would have to be an individual<br>effort.
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