"I mean," said my aunt, "that this little acquaintance which you wish they should make with each other before you marry them, seems to me a very necessary preliminary." "Pooh! They've still a good year before them! Besides, this little matter has nothing to do with romance." Then turning to me he continued; "Well, if that suits you for to-day, I have given you notice." "Capital!" added my aunt. "Well, Andre! How does it suit you?" "Why, aunt," I said, laughing in my turn at their little dispute; "I think my uncle may rely equally with you upon the pleasure it will give me." "All right, that's settled!" continued my aunt in an inimitable tone of hilarity; "at seven o'clock punctually, my dear nephew, you will come and fall in love." My uncle took no more notice of this last ironical shaft than of the rest, but occupied himself with selecting a cigar, remarking that what he had were too dry. My aunt availed herself of the opportunity of continuing her conversation with me. "Between you and me," she said, "I may tell you that you are not much to be pitied, for she is a charming girl, and you would really lose a good deal by not making her acquaintance." "I was only waiting for my uncle to decide the question." "You must at any rate be grateful to him for letting you meet _by chance_ before your wedding-day," she continued. "Oh, dear! one might think I wanted to marry them at a minute's notice!" said my uncle at these words. "Just like a woman's exaggerations! Perhaps you would have liked me to have introduced her to him before my last voyage, when she was a lass of fourteen, thin, awkward, and gawkish, as you all are at that age." "Thanks; why don't you say monkeys while you are about it?" replied my aunt with a curtsey. But my uncle intended to make a speech of it, and continued: "Who would have left in his mind the disagreeable recollection of a small, flat, angular creature, with arms like flutes, and hands and feet as long as that!" "Poor little creature! I shudder at the thought of it! However, in your ineffable wisdom, you have fattened her up with mystery." "Ta, ta, ta!" continued my uncle; "I have made a fine, healthy, solid young woman of her, who promises to make just the right sort of wife for Andre! And I maintain, in spite of your ideas on the subject, that I have done well to bring them up at a distance from each other, in order to preserve the freshness of their feelings, and avoid the necessity of that awkward and painful transformation of the affections which is so difficult for a couple who have grown up together and eaten their bread and butter together as brats in the nursery. To-day they will find each other just as they ought to before they become husband and wife. All the rest of the business must be left to them. If they like each other very much they will make a love-match, if not, a _mariage de raison_, which is just as good."