No; the frightened girl was not pleased. Not at all! Neither the aroma of fresh mulberry pies nor the midst of her uncle’s grotesque curios impressed her, and it was all because he wasn’t there. Intellectually, she realized that Peason ‘Sneaky Legs’ Longfellow, the enchanted brilliant scholar who had wanted to make her his life’s work, had a full life in which he was a prisoner in the very castle he had once owned, and he could not be expected to hold any consideration for the pleasure of one silent, underappreciated girl. Intellectually, she knew this. And yet…
   Truly, it had been a most verdant, eternal day when The Times had brought him to her attention.
   Abruptly, a sudden commotion, heavy footsteps in the hall shattered her composure into a million barely arcane, unconquerable pieces! She whirled around. Surely it could not be — but it was! At the door, the burning and masculine face she had come to know so well! “All I have is yours,” he breathed with a confidence that brooked neither denial nor disagreement while he went down on his knees and implored her to forgive him. “I need you, you quixotic Lolita, you!”
   Only in this moment of extremity could it have happened that as there was a much-appreciated break in the formerly-incessant shelling, she knew that life without him was unthinkable, if not sleazy. Wthout him, could she ever have took a moment to plan some of the details of their pre-nuptial agreement?