ll, our hero was getting a bit despondent about all this, and for
sure his friends weren't helping much. Far from their giving him
encouragement, their laughter rang so constantly in Sir Percival's
head that he began to wonder if he was still quite sane. And not
a few of his friends hinted here and there that psychiatric
consultation might be useful to the knight, to get him over his
ridiculous interest in the agreeable Arissa.

About this time it so happened that as Sir Percival was on his way
to visit Sir Wishful for a nice dinner of trout and onions, he quite
unexpectedly came upon Arissa, lovely as ever, sitting near the
village waterfall and picking her teeth. Almost out of habit, Sir
Percival spoke: "Arissa, sugar, would you like to go out with
me sometime?"

To which Arissa: "Oh, Perce, didn't I tell you I was busy?"

To which Sir Percival: "Yeah, fair one, but I thought maybe you'd
had a cancellation or something."

To which Arissa: "Well, if I did have a cancellation, I wouldn't
fill it up with you. Besides, what would we do?"

To which Sir Percival: "We could go to dinner."

To which Arissa: "Like where, ifay?"

To which Sir Percival: "Andre's French Victuals."

To which Arissa: "And when would this be?"

To which Sir Percival: "I dunno. How about tomorrow night?"

To which--well, anyway, to her own surprise, to the astonishment of
Sir Percival, and to the great confusion of the rest of the kingdom,
Arissa finally actually agreed to this scenario and the next evening
the two young people went to Andre's.

Arissa, of course, ordered the eleven most expensive things on the
menu, for she was still intending to discourage Sir Percival, but
the knight was willing to put up with only a glass of water for his
own dinner, because the success he had enjoyed so far with the
desirable Arissa had quite taken away his appetite anyway.

In the course of the evening, Arissa happened to remark, "I wish
they had apricots on the menu here. You know, I really love them.
I could eat them by the ton."

To which Sir Percival: "Why, Arissa, my dove, I own an orchard of
apricot trees."

To which Arissa: "Really? Oh, Perce." When she pronounced his name,
the young maiden sighed and a glisten appeared in one or both eyes.

Well, from here the story gets pretty mushy, so we'd better make it
short. This delightful couple soon held hands; they discovered anon
that their lips fit together pretty well, Arissa's t