"To be sure I am, and when I went abroad I left everything to your father. All I now have I earned for myself."
"I have not come for money, but to ask you to fulfil the office of a father for me."
"How? What?"
"Uncle, Annele of the Lion and I love one another. Her mother knows it and sanctions it. Now I am to ask her of her father, according to the custom, and I want you to go with me as my father's brother."
"So?" said Petrovitsch, putting a lump of white sugar in his mouth and walking up and down the carpeted room.
"So?" he repeated as he faced about. "You will have an energetic wife, and I must say you have good courage. I should not have given you credit for having the courage to take such a wife."
"Courage! What do you mean by that?"
"No harm; but I would not have believed you had the presumption to take such a wife."
"Presumption? What presumption is there in it?"
Petrovitsch smiled, and made no answer.