“I don’t care a fig about his ideas of Austria,” cried my aunt, hotly. “I only feel that to my dying day I shall deplore the marriage as a heavy disgrace.” “Upon my word you are wilful!” retorted Dick, with equal warmth. “Disgrace! I’ll tell you what--had Theresa fallen in love with Curling, she should have married him.” Theresa smiled. “And how are you going to get over the elopement?” called out my aunt. “By forgetting it!” replied the other. “Who cares about an elopement?” he added, contemptuously. “In my young days we were all of us running away with one another. Love was then a passion worth feeling--a smart, adventurous, dashing emotion, fed with stronger waters than the tea and negus you now give it; a heroical combination of enraged fathers and moonlit nights, postchaises and turnpikes, cloaks and swoons, brandy and bliss. I don’t mean to say that Curling had any right to walk off with your daughter in that manner; but since he _did_, give him the credit of having spirit. My dear woman, I really expected to meet some wretched, shrivelled mannikin, a poor fool with about fourpennyworth of soul in his composition, on no account to be introduced to your friends, and whom you were to hope would, at your evening parties, be mistaken for a waiter. Instead, my admiration is challenged by a gentleman, and my anticipative contempt converted into honest gratulations.” “Dick is no humbug,” said his brother, looking into his wife’s dogged face, “and if he saw anything in Curling to despise he’d say so.” “Right out,” responded Dick. “Curling possesses a thorough knowledge of business,” I observed, thinking it incumbent upon me to say something in the youth’s praise. “How Thomas can so easily forgive that double-dealing cashier of his, is horribly puzzling!” cried his wife; “for my part----” “What would you have me do?” interrupted Thomas. “Suppose the bargain a bad one: is that a reason for making the worst of it? I _don’t_ forgive him for running away with Conny: I consider that in doing so he was guilty of gross impertinence. But can I unmarry them? Teach me how, and I’ll make them single to-morrow. But since you can’t, and I can’t; since they are as utterly man and wife as you and I, what’s the use of storming and raging?” “No use,” exclaimed uncle Dick, with deep emphasis. “My argument,” continued Tom, “is, let us strive to make them comfortable--let us endeavour to find something in this unfortunate affair to qualify our disappointment and to teach us to believe that, as it has happened, it has happened for the best.” “Sound philosophy!” cried Dick as triumphantly as if the speech had been his; “and worth more than the loudest shrieks with which human lungs could pierce the ear.” “Ay, _you_ can talk,” exclaimed my aunt, “but there sits your daughter--safe!” “Not so safe as you think,” he answered turning shortly round and confronting his daughter and me, who sat unnecessarily close together.