Mr. George, who has been looking first at one of them and then at the other, as if he were demented, takes his venerable acquaintance by the throat on receiving this request, and dragging him upright in his chair as easily as if he were a doll, appears in two minds whether or no to shake all future power of cushioning out of him and shake him into his grave.  Resisting the temptation, but agitating him violently enough to make his head roll like a harlequin’s, he puts him smartly down in his chair again and adjusts his skull-cap with such a rub that the old man winks with both eyes for a minute afterwards.

“O Lord!” gasps Mr. Smallweed.  “That’ll do.  Thank you, my dear friend, that’ll do.  Oh, dear me, I’m out of breath.  O Lord!” And Mr. Smallweed says it not without evident apprehensions of his dear friend, who still stands over him looming larger than ever.

The alarming presence, however, gradually subsides into its chair and falls to smoking in long puffs, consoling itself with the philosophical reflection, “The name of your friend in the city begins with a D, comrade, and you’re about right respecting the bond.”

“Did you speak, Mr. George?” inquires the old man.

The trooper shakes his head, and leaning forward with his right elbow on his right knee and his pipe supported in that hand, while his other hand, resting on his left leg, squares his left elbow in a martial manner, continues to smoke.  Meanwhile he looks at Mr. Smallweed with grave attention and now and then fans the cloud of smoke away in order that he may see him the more clearly.

“I take it,” he says, making just as much and as little change in his position as will enable him to reach the glass to his lips with a round, full action, “that I am the only man alive (or dead either) that gets the value of a pipe out of you?”

“Well,” returns the old man, “it’s true that I don’t see company, Mr. George, and that I don’t treat.  I can’t afford to it.  But as you, in your pleasant way, made your pipe a condition—­”

“Why, it’s not for the value of it; that’s no great thing.  It was a fancy to get it out of you.  To have something in for my money.”

“Ha!  You’re prudent, prudent, sir!” cries Grandfather Smallweed, rubbing his legs.

“Very.  I always was.”  Puff.  “It’s a sure sign of my prudence that I ever found the way here.”  Puff.  “Also, that I am what I am.”  Puff.  “I am well known to be prudent,” says Mr. George, composedly smoking.  “I rose in life that way.”

“Don’t be down-hearted, sir.  You may rise yet.”

Mr. George laughs and drinks.

“Ha’n’t you no relations, now,” asks Grandfather Smallweed with a twinkle in his eyes, “who would pay off this little principal or who would lend you a good name or two that I could persuade my friend in the city to make you a further advance upon?  Two good names would be sufficient for my friend in the city.  Ha’n’t you no such relations, Mr. George?”