And so Philip is actually gone after his charmer, and is pursuing her _summâ diligentiâ_? The Baynes family has allowed this penniless young law student to make love to their daughter, to accompany them to Paris, to appear as the almost recognized son of the house. “Other people, when they were young, wanted to make imprudent marriages,” says my wife (as if that wretched _tu quoque_ were any answer to my remark!) “This penniless law student might have a good sum of money if he chose to press the Baynes family to pay him what, after all, they owe him.” And so poor little Charlotte was to be her father’s ransom! To be sure, little Charlotte did not object to offer herself up in payment of her papa’s debt! And though I objected as a moral man and a prudent man, and a father of a family, I could not be very seriously angry. I am secretly of the disposition of the time-honoured _père de famille_ in the comedies, the irascible old gentleman in the crop wig and George-the-Second coat, who is always menacing “Tom the young dog” with his cane. When the deed is done, and Miranda (the little sly-boots!) falls before my squaretoes and shoe-buckles, and Tom the young dog kneels before me in his white ducks, and they cry out in a pretty chorus, “Forgive us, grandpapa!” I say, “Well, you rogue, boys will be boys. Take her, sirrah! Be happy with her; and, hark ye! in this pocket-book you will find ten thousand,” &c. &c. You all know the story: I cannot help liking it, however old it may be. In love, somehow, one is pleased that young people should dare a little. Was not Bessy Eldon famous as an economist, and Lord Eldon celebrated for wisdom and caution? and did not John Scott marry Elizabeth Surtees when they had scarcely twopence a year between them? “Of course, my dear,” I say to the partner of my existence, “now this madcap fellow is utterly ruined, now is the very time he ought to marry. The accepted doctrine is that a man should spend his own fortune, then his wife’s fortune, and then he may begin to get on at the bar. Philip has a hundred pounds, let us say; Charlotte has nothing; so that in about six weeks we may look to hear of Philip being in successful practice——”