"Well, well," said he, "I know you don't mean it. Your bark's worse than your bite, old girl. Come and look at the new pigs." He drew my hand under his arm and patted it. We had had so many little tiffs lately--things we never dreamt of till Miss Blount came!--that I was determined not to quarrel now. It should never be said that _I_ was to blame for making a happy home unhappy. I swallowed my vexation and went to see the pigs--thirteen little black Berkshires, all as lively as they could be, on which he gloated whole-heartedly for the moment, as if they were more than wife or children. In his expansive ardour he offered me one of them to make a festive dish of for Sunday. "Let us have a little feast, Polly, for the young folks. Harry is able to sit up to table now, and we have done nothing to celebrate the engagement yet. Sucking-pig and one of the fat turkeys, and ask Juke to join us. Eh?" "My dear," I replied, "I am perfectly willing to celebrate the engagement in any way you like--yes, we'll have a nice dinner, and ask Dr. Juke--I am sure we owe him every attention that we can possibly pay him; but what I want to warn you against is letting them suppose that there is to be any celebration of the marriage--with our consent." Tom stared as if he did not understand. "You mean, not immediately?" he questioned. "Of course not." "I mean, not for _years_," I solemnly urged. "Tom, you must back me up in this. The boy is but a boy, with his way to make in the world. Before we allow him to saddle himself with a wife who will probably be quite useless--those University women always are--and the responsibilities of a family, he _must_ be in a position to afford it." "Yes," said Tom, in a tepid way. "But you and I, Polly----" "Oh, never mind about you and me," I broke in; "that is altogether different"--for of course it was. "You were a man of twice his age." "Which would make him about fourteen," said my husband, trying to be funny. As for me, I saw nothing to laugh at. I cannot imagine a more serious position as between parent and child. "At his time of life," I said, "four years are equal to ten at any other stage. Let him have those four years--let him begin where his father did--and I shall be quite satisfied." "Well, you see, my dear, it hardly rests with us, does it?" Tom stirred up the mother sow with his walking-stick, and sniggered in a most feeble-minded fashion. "How? Why not?" I demanded. "Do you mean to say you have not the power to influence him? Do you think that Harry, if properly advised, would persist in taking his own way in spite of us? I refuse to believe that any son of _mine_ could do such a thing."