And now, with a trifling difference or two, here's history repeating itself in the oddest manner possible, father and mother flown down again to Devonshire, and somebody offering, in their absence, to take care of Miss Molly--but for rather longer than a paltry two weeks; and please what do we think of it? By the same post, too, comes a brief, apologetic sort of letter from the candidate himself. He had meant to wait for another year or so before suggesting himself as even a possible caretaker, only as it happened last night at Lady Pearson's she was looking, etc. etc.--and you know how these things will get the better of a chap, etc. etc.--and, well, there it was, don't you know; and now it is all upon the knees of the gods. Or of one little goddess, did he mean to say? Because that of course is where it really is, as you both know very well indeed, in spite of your pretty letters to us, which have made your mother and me feel at once very elderly and happy and anxious (in a not too unpleasant sense) and also--do you mind?--vicariously honoured. I doubt if I am looking at the matter quite eye to eye with the W.S.P.U. when I say this; but you'll have to forgive me, I think, especially as it's your Daddy's opinion that you ask for, and not theirs. So I'll tell you just what I felt when I read your letter, and comprehended its tidings. 1. Dear me, is she really as old as that? 2. Then what am I? 3. _O tempus edax rerum!_ 4. But it's really rather gratifying. 5. Because after all there are so many nice girls in the world. 6. And yet it's _my_ girl that he would like to marry. 7. _Our_ girl, please. (This from Esther.) You see how primitive we become in these little crises of life. And I think, if you really want to have my very particular message to you about this, it is--don't mind being a little primitive yourself. On the whole, perhaps, I am not able to prescribe this as often as I should like; and chiefly because, I suppose, the young couples that come to me for an opinion on matrimony are not as a rule normal young couples. They have usually been sent, that is to say, by some wise or anxious guardian who has foreseen for them some probable disaster. And often enough I have had to beseech them for their own good and for the unborn others to let their reason lay aside their passion--not without tears.