Dally

dally
verb, intransitive. To act or move slowly. To have a casual romantic or sexual liaison with someone. To show a casual interest in something, without committing oneself seriously.

Donna could not understand why her mother was always in a hurry--never enjoying the sights and activities that were always going on around them, everywhere they went. Donna could not get enough of this big, delightful world. Now was a great example. When her mother slowed to survey a store's window display, she let go of Donna's hand and Donna leapt at the opportunity to look at something she had noticed down the sidewalk the way they had come: a man playing a guitar and singing on the sidewalk. His guitar case was open on the pavement beside him, and coins lay scattered on the red felt lining.

Donna approached, drawn both by the music and by the bright coins reflecting the mid-morning sunlight. She couldn't decide which was more intriguing: the man's animated face, his robust, deep voice, or the gleaming money--so close to her own hands, so available.

The music won. Donna stood transfixed as the singer launched into an exuberant chorus, the dancing notes his fingers struck transforming into a rhythmic strumming. Her reverie was suddenly broken when her harried mother grabbed her hand and yanked, wrenching Donna's shoulder.

"Why must you dally like this?" Her mother cried, oblivious to the annoyed look the singer and another adult gave her. "You know I'm in a hurry."

Donna had no choice but to hurry herself, running to keep up with her mother's strides, while looking back at the guitar player over her shoulder, wishing she could stay and listen to the entire song, then listen to the next.

"Someday," she told herself as she jogged and stumbled, almost dragged by the hand, "someday I'll be big and I can stop and listen to the music and look at everything I want. Then, I'll be happy. Not like Mother."

Definitions adapted from The New Oxford American Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Inc., 2005 (eBook Edition, copyright 2008), and from Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, 1965, depending on which is more convenient to hand.