At breakfast the following morning Maisie Morrison decided to make no
mention to her aunt and uncle of the interesting bit of news concerning
Dan Pritchard of which she was the possessor.
Always cautious and conservative, she preferred to place herself in full
possession of the facts in the case, and to have this information
bolstered up by her own feeling about the situation following a meeting
with Dan’s ward, before discussing his business with anybody.
Maisie was mildly amused in the knowledge that Dan, of all men, should
have such a problem thrust upon him; she looked forward with no little
interest to watching the peculiar man approach his unusual duty. She
expected if she mentioned the matter that old Casson would laugh
patronizingly and pretend to find the situation devoid of a mature man’s
interest; he might even indulge himself in some light and caustic
criticism, with a touch of elephantine humor in it. That had seemed to
be his attitude toward Dan for a year past and Maisie resented it
fiercely—all the more fiercely, in fact, because her position in
Casson’s household forbade an expression of her resentment.
“I think I shall motor to Del Monte this morning for two weeks of golf,”
old Casson announced to his wife and Maisie at breakfast. “Suppose you
two pack up and go with me.”
“I think that would be delightful, John,” his wife replied.
“I have other fish to fry. Sorry!” Maisie answered him. “If you had
hinted of this yesterday, Uncle John——”
“My dear Maisie, the idea but this moment occurred to me. Better alter
your plans and come along.”
She shook her head.
“It occurred to me this instant—as I have already stated—” Casson
continued, “to escape boredom for two weeks. Our schooner Moorea is in
port and will remain here that long, in all probability. That means the
office will be set by the heels. Her bear-like skipper, Larrieau, will
go roaring from one room to the other, disturbing everybody except
Pritchard and amusing everybody except me. I cannot tolerate the man,
and if I should see too much of him I fear I might forget his record for
efficiency and dismiss him. He was a pet of Dan’s father, and Dan, too,
makes much of him. I dislike pets in a business office.”
Maisie looked at him coolly. “Then you will be happy to know that your
contemplated exile to Del Monte is quite unnecessary, Uncle John.
Captain Larrieau was discovered, upon arrival, to be a leper, so he sent
ashore for Dan, settled all of his business and committed suicide by
drowning yesterday evening.”
“Bless my soul! Where did you glean this astounding intelligence?”
“I talked with Dan over the telephone late last night.”
“You should have told me sooner, Maisie.”
Old Casson’s voice was stern; his weak, handsome face pretended chagrin.
“Why?”
“Why? What a question! Isn’t the man in my employ—or, at least, wasn’t
he?”
“He was in the employ of Casson and Pritchard, and Dan Pritchard has
attended to the matter for the firm.”
“I should have been communicated with immediately. Pritchard should have
telephoned to me, not to you.”
“Oh dear, Uncle John! One would think you revered the man so highly you
planned to have the bay dragged to recover his body, instead of being
happy in the knowledge that you have gotten rid of the nuisance.”
“Humph-h-h-h! We’ll not discuss it further, my dear. However, it is
difficult for me to refrain from expressing my irritation. How like
young Pritchard it was to disregard me entirely in this matter! For all
the deference or consideration that fellow pays me as the senior member
of the firm, I might as well be a traffic policeman.”
Maisie’s fine eyes flamed in sudden anger. “Has it ever occurred to you,
Uncle John, that in declining to annoy you with unnecessary details, by
his persistence in relieving you of the labor and worry of the business
management of Casson and Pritchard, Dan may be showing you the courtesy
and consideration due you as the senior member of the firm?”
“I am not a back number—yet, Maisie,” he assured her.
“Why do you not buy him out, Uncle John? He seems to be a very great
trial to you.”
Old Casson appeared to consider this suggestion very seriously as he
gravely tapped the shell of his matutinal egg. “That isn’t a half bad
idea, Maisie,” he answered. “At present, however, I am scarcely in
position to buy his interest. I anticipate this condition will be
materially changed within the next three or four months, and then——”
He paused eloquently and scooped his egg into the glass.
“I infer you have a hen on,” Maisie suggested.
“Perhaps the metaphor would be less mixed if we substituted a goose for
the hen. I believe the goose is the fowl currently credited with the
ability to lay golden eggs.”
“John Casson!” His wife now spoke for the first time. “Are you mixed in
another gamble?”
“Not at all, my dear, not at all. I have invested in several cargoes of
Chinese rice at a very low price, and I have sold one cargo at a very
high price. I am holding the others for the crest of a market that is
rising like a toy balloon. It isn’t gambling, my dear. It’s just a
mortal certainty.”
The good lady sighed. How often, in the thirty years of her life with
John Casson, had she heard him, in those same buoyant, confident,
mellifluous tones, assure her of the infallibility of victory due to his
superior judgment!
As usual, Maisie placed her finger on the sore spot. “What does Dan
think of it, Uncle John?”
“He doesn’t think anything, my dear. He doesn’t know.”
“Oh, I see! This is a private venture of yours?”
He nodded. “Yes—and no, Maisie. It’s a Casson and Pritchard deal, only
I’m engineering it myself. I’m going to prove to that overconfident
young man the truth of the old saying ‘Nothing risked, nothing gained.’
Why, the biggest thing in years lay right under his nose—and he passed
it by.”
“He was in Honolulu on that pineapple deal when you stumbled across this
good thing, was he not, Uncle John?”
“Yes, but then he knew about it before he left for Honolulu.”
“Well, I hope you’ll make a killing, Uncle John.”
He beamed his thanks upon her. “When I do—and I cannot _help_ doing
it—I’m going to be mighty nice to my niece,” he assured her. “However,”
he continued reminiscently, “my day for taking a sporting chance is
over. I’ve learned my lesson.”
“Have you?” his wife ventured hopefully.
“Just to prove to you that I have,” he challenged, “if I get an offer of
twenty-four cents per pound, f.o.b. Havana, today, I’ll sell every pound
of rice I have in transit or hold under purchase contract.”
“What was the market yesterday, John?”
“Twenty-three cents.”
“Sell at that today,” Maisie urged him.
He smiled and shook his head. These women! How little they knew of the
great game of business! How little did they realize that, to succeed, a
man must be possessed of an amazing courage, a stupendous belief in his
own powers, in his knowledge of the game he is playing. Maisie read him
accurately. He was as easy to read as an electric sign.
When he had departed for the office, Mrs. Casson, a dainty, very
youthful appearing woman of fifty-five, and long since robbed of any
illusions concerning certain impossible phases of her husband’s
character spoke up:
“Sometimes, Maisie, I suspect John Casson is in his second childhood.”
“You’re wrong, Auntie. In some respects he hasn’t emerged from his first
childhood. For instance, Uncle John is nurturing the belief that Dan
isn’t aware of his operations.”
“You think Dan knows?”
“I’m sure of it.”
“Has he told you so?”
“No.”
“He ought to be told.”
“I shall tell him—this very morning. Uncle John, wrapped in his supreme
sense of self-sufficiency, appears to have forgotten that in an
unlimited partnership each partner is irrevocably bound by the actions
of the other.”
“I wonder at Dan’s patience with him.”
“I do not. Dan has explained it to me.”
Mrs. Casson’s maternal glance dwelt tenderly upon her dead sister’s
daughter. “Maisie, I want to talk to you about Dan,” she began, but
Maisie raised a deprecating hand.
“What profit could possibly arise from such a discussion?”
Mrs. Casson, however, was a woman driven by curiosity. “I wonder if he
is in love with you, my dear. Sometimes I am almost certain of it, and
at other times I am not so certain.”
“I think dear old simple Dan finds himself similarly afflicted.”
“Well?” The query, the inflection and the dramatic pause before the good
soul continued were not lost on Maisie. “Why don’t you do something
about it, dear?”
“Why should I?”
“You’re twenty-four years old—and certainly Dan Pritchard is the most
eligible bachelor in your set. And I know you’re very, very fond of
him.”
“Everybody is. He is wholly lovable.”
“Well, then, Maisie——”
“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.”
Providentially, she did not!