"I should not dream of calling him Uncle Peter," said Molly. "Do you mean to say that Miss Thoroughbung called him Peter? Where could she have got the courage?" To this Joe replied that he believed his aunt had courage for anything under the sun. "I don't think that she ought to have called him Peter," continued Molly. "Of course after that there couldn't be a marriage."
"I don't quite see why not," said Joe. "I call you Molly, and I expect you to marry me."
"And I call you Joe, and I expect you to marry me; but we ain't quite the same."
"The Squire of Buston," said Joe, "considers himself Squire of Buston. I suppose that the old Queen of Heaven didn't call Jupiter Jove till they'd been married at any rate some centuries."
"Well done, Joe," said Harry.
"He'll become fellow of a college yet," said Molly.
"If you'll let me alone I will," said Joe. "But only conceive the kind of scene there must have been at the house up there when Aunt Matty had forced her way in among your uncle's slippers and dressing-gowns. I'd have given a five-pound note to have seen and heard it."
"I'd have given two if it had never occurred. He had written me a letter which I had taken as a pardon in full for all my offences. He had assured me that he had no intention of marrying, and had offered to give me back my old allowance. Now I am told that he has quarrelled with me again altogether, because of some light word as to me and my concerns spoken by this vivacious old aunt of yours. I wish your vivacious old aunt had remained at Buntingford."
"And we had wished that your vivacious old uncle had remained at Buston when he came love-making to Marmaduke Lodge."
"He was an old fool! and, among ourselves, always has been," said Molly, who on the occasion thought it incumbent upon her to take the Thoroughbung rather than the Prosper side of the quarrel.