No one insisted so loudly as the cousin with the red flower in her wig; and when the other cousins seemed about to weaken and accept the note, Red-Flower stood up and exhorted them to be firm, lest their flesh and blood be cheated under their noses.

The meddlesome cousin was silenced at last, the contract was signed, the happiness of the engaged couple was pledged in wine, the guests dispersed.

And all this while my mother had not opened her mouth, and my father had scarcely been heard.
That is the way my fate was sealed.

It gives me a shudder of wonder to think what a narrow escape I had; I came so near not being born at all.

If the beggarly cousin with the frowzy wig had prevailed upon her family and broken off the match, then my mother would not have married my father, and I should at this moment be an unborn possibility in a philosopher's brain.