"I'm glad you see that."
"Though neither so inexperienced nor so young as mamma was when she married you. And you were only twenty-one yourself, father, while Carli is nearly twenty-three."
"I wouldn't compare the two instances if I were you."
"I don't. I merely state the facts. I want to make it plain that, though we're both very young, we're not so young as to make the case exceptional."
"But I understood you to say that there was no—case."
"There is to this extent: that while I'm free, Carli considers himself bound. That's the way we've left it."
"That is to say, he's engaged, but you aren't."
"That's what Carli thinks."
"Then I refuse to consent to it."
"But, father dear," Dorothea asked, arching her pretty eyebrows, "do you have to consent to what Carli thinks about himself? Can't he do that just as he likes?"