"Ah! that sets it all right again," said Pierre, resuming his fork--"my appetite returns. But what was that about my being married so soon?" he added, vainly striving to assume an air of incredulity and unconcern; "you were joking, I suppose; it seems to me, sister, either you or I was but just now wandering in the mind a little, on that subject. Are you really thinking of any such thing? and have you really vanquished your sagacious scruples by yourself, after I had so long and ineffectually sought to do it for you? Well, I am a million times delighted; tell me quick!" "I will, Pierre. You very well know, that from the first hour you apprised me--or rather, from a period prior to that--from the moment that I, by my own insight, became aware of your love for Lucy, I have always approved it. Lucy is a delicious girl; of honorable descent, a fortune, well-bred, and the very pattern of all that I think amiable and attractive in a girl of seventeen." "Well, well, well," cried Pierre rapidly and impetuously; "we both knew that before." "Well, well, well, Pierre," retorted his mother, mockingly. "It is not well, well, well; but ill, ill, ill, to torture me so, mother; go on, do!" "But notwithstanding my admiring approval of your choice, Pierre; yet, as you know, I have resisted your entreaties for my consent to your speedy marriage, because I thought that a girl of scarcely seventeen, and a boy scarcely twenty, should not be in such a hurry;--there was plenty of time, I thought, which could be profitably employed by both." "Permit me here to interrupt you, mother. Whatever you may have seen in me; she,--I mean Lucy,--has never been in the slightest hurry to be married;--that's all. But I shall regard it as a _lapsus-lingua_ in you." "Undoubtedly, a _lapsus_. But listen to me. I have been carefully observing both you and Lucy of late; and that has made me think further of the matter. Now, Pierre, if you were in any profession, or in any business at all; nay, if I were a farmer's wife, and you my child, working in my fields; why, then, you and Lucy should still wait awhile. But as you have nothing to do but to think of Lucy by day, and dream of her by night, and as she is in the same predicament, I suppose; with respect to you; and as the consequence of all this begins to be discernible in a certain, just perceptible, and quite harmless thinness, so to speak, of the cheek; but a very conspicuous and dangerous febrileness of the eye; therefore, I choose the lesser of two evils; and now you have my permission to be married, as soon as the thing can be done with propriety. I dare say you have no objection to have the wedding take place before Christmas, the present month being the first of summer." Pierre said nothing; but leaping to his feet, threw his two arms around his mother, and kissed her repeatedly.