What nonsense we are talking! But what you said reminds me.

It's the strangest coincidence!" "What is it ?" "Your Professor Meschines----" "On the contrary, he is a most matter-of-fact old gentleman." "Do be quiet, and listen to me! When my mamma was a girl in school, there were two boys there,--it was a boy-and-girls' school,--and they were great friends.

But they both fell in love with my mamma----" "I can understand that," put in Freeman.
"How do you know I am like my mamma?
Well, as I was saying, they both fell in love with her, and quarrelled with each other, and had a fight.
The boy that won the fight is the man to whose house I am going." "Then he didn't marry your mamma ?" "Oh, no; that was only a childish affair, and she married another man." "The one who got thrashed ?" "Of course not.

But the one who got thrashed is your Professor Meschines." "I see! The poor old professor! And he has remained a bachelor all his life." "Mamma has often told me the story, and that the Trednoke boy went to West Point, and distinguished himself in the Mexican war, and married a Mexican woman, and the Meschines boy became a professor in Yale College.
And now I am going to see one of them, and you to see the other.

Isn't that a coincidence ?" "The first of a long series, I trust.