did not hear Laura's clear voice singing out,
until Smirke pulled him by the coat and pointed towards her as she came
running.

She ran up and put her hand into his. "Come in, Pen," she said, "there's
somebody come; uncle Arthur's come."

"He is, is he?" said Pen, and she felt him grasp her little hand. He
looked round at Smirke with uncommon fierceness, as much as to say, I
am ready for him or any man.--Mr. Smirke cast up his eyes as usual and
heaved a gentle sigh.

"Lead on, Laura," Pen said, with a half fierce, half comic air--"Lead
on, and say I wait upon my uncle." But he was laughing in order to
hide a great anxiety: and was screwing his courage inwardly to face the
ordeal which he knew was now before him.

Pen had taken Smirke into his confidence in the last two days, and after
the outbreak attendant on the discovery of Doctor Portman, and during
every one of those forty-eight hours which he had passed in Mr.
Smirke's society, had done nothing but talk to his tutor about Miss
Fotheringay--Miss Emily Fotheringay--Emily, etc., to all which talk
Smirke listened without difficulty, for he was in love himself, most
anxious in all things to propitiate Pen, and indeed very much himself
enraptured by the personal charms of this goddess, whose like, never
having been before at a theatrical representation, he had not beheld
until now. Pen's fire and 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 utt