Being with my father and mother on a visit about six miles from Southampton, we were invited by a gentleman of the neighborhood to meet the wife and daughters of a certain Dr. Blamire. “An old friend of yours and mine,” quoth our inviter to my father. “Don’t you remember how you used to flirt with the fair lady when you and Babington were at Haslar? Faith, if Blamire had not taken pity on her, it would have gone hard with the poor damsel! However, he made up to the disconsolate maiden, and she got over it. Nothing like a new love for chasing away an old one. You must dine with us to-morrow. I shall like to see the meeting.” My father did not attempt to deny the matter. Men never do. He laughed, as all that wicked sex do laugh at such sins twenty years after, and professed that he should be very glad to shake hands with his old acquaintance. So the next day we met. I was a little curious to see how my own dear mother, my mamma that was, and the stranger lady, my mamma that might have been, would bear themselves on the occasion. At first, my dear mother, an exceedingly ladylike, quiet person, had considerably the advantage, being prepared for the _recontre_ and perfectly calm and composed; while Mrs. Blamire, taken, I suspect, by surprise, was a good deal startled and flustered. This state of things, however, did not last. Mrs. Blamire having got over the first shock, comported herself like what she evidently was, a practiced woman of the world—would talk to no one but ourselves—and seemed resolved not only to make friends with her successful rival, but to strike up an intimacy. This by no means entered into my mother’s calculations. As the one advanced the other receded, and, keeping always within the limits of civility, I never heard so much easy chat put aside with so many cool and stately monosyllables in my life. The most diverting part of this scene, very amusing to a stander-by, was, that my father, the only real culprit, was the only person who throughout maintained the appearance and demeanor of the most unconscious innocence. He complimented Mrs. Blamire on her daughters (two very fine girls)—inquired after his old friend, the Doctor, who was attending his patients in a distant town—and laughed and talked over bygone stories with the one lady, just as if he had not jilted her—and played the kind and attentive husband to the other, just as if he had never made love to any body except his own dear wife. It was one of the strange domestic comedies which are happening around us every day, if we were but aware of them, and might probably have ended in a renewal of acquaintance between the two families but for a dispute that occurred toward the end of the evening between Mrs. Blamire and the friend in whose house we were staying, which made the lady resolve against accepting his hospitable invitations, and I half suspect hurried her off a day or two before her time.