Lavvy, sitting with defiantly folded arms, replied (but not audibly), "For goodness' sake say whichever of the two you like best, Ma, and get it over." "The mind," pursued Mrs. Wilfer in an oratorical manner, "naturally reverts to Papa and Mama--I here allude to my parents--at a period before the earliest dawn of this day. I was considered tall; perhaps I was. Papa and Mama were unquestionably tall. I have rarely seen a finer woman than my mother; never than my father." The irrepressible Lavvy remarked aloud, "Whatever grandpapa was, he wasn't a female." "Your grandpapa," retorted Mrs. Wilfer, with an awful look, and in an awful tone, "was what I describe him to have been, and would have struck any of his grandchildren to the earth who presumed to question it. It was one of Mama's cherished hopes that I should become united to a tall member of society. It may have been a weakness, but if so, it was equally the weakness, I believe, of King Frederick of Prussia." These remarks being offered to Mr. George Sampson, who had not the courage to come out for single combat, but lurked with his chest under the table and his eyes cast down, Mrs. Wilfer proceeded, in a voice of increasing sternness and impressiveness, until she should force that skulker to give himself up. "Mama would appear to have had an indefinable foreboding of what afterward happened, for she would frequently urge upon me, 'Not a little man. Promise me, my child, not a little man. Never, never, never marry a little man!' Papa also would remark to me (he possest extraordinary humor), 'That a family of whales must not ally themselves with sprats.'