volubility, his hot eloquence and rich poetical tropes and figures, his
manly heart, kind, ardent, and hopeful, refusing to see any defects in
the person he loved, any difficulties in their position that he might not
overcome, had half convinced Mr. Smirke that the arrangement proposed by
Mr. Pen was a very feasible and prudent one, and that it would be a great
comfort to have Emily settled at Fairoaks, Captain Costigan in the yellow
room, established for life there, and Pen married at eighteen.

And it is a fact that in these two days the boy had almost talked over
his mother, too; had parried all her objections one after another with
that indignant good sense which is often the perfection of absurdity; and
had brought her almost to acquiesce in the belief that if the marriage
was doomed in heaven, why doomed it was--that if the young woman was a
good person, it was all that she for her part had to ask; and rather to
dread the arrival of the guardian uncle who she foresaw would regard Mr.
Pen's marriage in a manner very different to that simple, romantic,
honest, and utterly absurd way in which the widow was already disposed to
look at questions of this sort.

For as in the old allegory of the gold and silver shield, about which
the two knights quarrelled, each is right according to the point from
which he looks: so about marriage; the question whether it is foolish or
good, wise or otherwise, depends upon the point of view from which you
regard it. If it means a snug house in Belgravia, and pretty little
dinner-parties, and a pretty little brougham to drive in the Park, and a
decent provision not only for the young people, but for the little
Belgravians to come; and if these are the necessaries of life (and they
are with many honest people), to talk of any other arrangement is an
absurdity: of love in lodgings--a babyish folly of affection: that can't
pay coach-hire or afford a decent milliner--as mere wicked balderdash and