Louisa jumped and lighted the lamp, and I set the rocking-chair for Mrs. Jameson. "No, I can't sit down," said she, waving her hand. "I am too much disturbed to sit down," but even as she said that she did drop into the rocking-chair. Louisa said afterward that Mrs. Jameson was one who always would sit down during all the vicissitudes of life, no matter how hard she took them. Mrs. Jameson was very much disturbed; we had never seen her calm superiority so shaken; it actually seemed as if she realized for once that she was not quite the peer of circumstances, as Louisa said. "I wish to inquire if you have known long of this shameful clandestine love affair of my daughter's?" said she, and Louisa and I were nonplussed. We did not know what to say. Luckily, Mrs. Jameson did not wait for an answer; she went on to pour her grievance into our ears, without even stopping to be sure whether they were sympathizing ones or not. "My daughter cannot marry into one of these village families," said she, without apparently the slightest consideration of the fact that we were a village family. "My daughter has been very differently brought up. I have other views for her; it is impossible; it must be understood at once that I will not have it." Mrs. Jameson was still talking, and Louisa and I listening with more of dismay than sympathy, when who should walk in but Caroline Liscom herself. She did not knock--she never does; she opened the door with no warning whatsoever, and stood there. Louisa turned pale, and I know I must have. I could not command my voice, though I tried hard to keep calm. I said "Good-morning," when it should have been "Good-evening," and placed Alice's little chair, in which she could not by any possibility sit, for Caroline. "No, I don't want to sit down," said Caroline, and she kept her word better than Mrs. Jameson. She turned directly to the latter. "I have just been over to your house," said she, "and they told me that you had come over here. I want to say something to you, and that is, I don't want my son to marry your daughter, and I will never give my consent to it, never, never!" Mrs. Jameson's face was a study. For a minute she had not a word to say; she only gasped. Finally she spoke. "You can be no more unwilling to have your son marry my daughter than I am to have my daughter marry your son," said she. Then Caroline said something unexpected. "I would like to know what you have against my son, as fine a young man as there is anywhere about, I don't care who he is," said she. And Mrs. Jameson said something unexpected. "I should like to inquire what you have against my daughter?" said she. "Well, I'll tell you one thing," returned Caroline; "she doesn't know enough to keep a doll-baby's house, and she ain't neat."