Mr. George, still composedly smoking, replies, “If I had, I shouldn’t trouble them.  I have been trouble enough to my belongings in my day.  It may be a very good sort of penitence in a vagabond, who has wasted the best time of his life, to go back then to decent people that he never was a credit to and live upon them, but it’s not my sort.  The best kind of amends then for having gone away is to keep away, in my opinion.”

“But natural affection, Mr. George,” hints Grandfather Smallweed.

“For two good names, hey?” says Mr. George, shaking his head and still composedly smoking.  “No.  That’s not my sort either.”

Grandfather Smallweed has been gradually sliding down in his chair since his last adjustment and is now a bundle of clothes with a voice in it calling for Judy.  That houri, appearing, shakes him up in the usual manner and is charged by the old gentleman to remain near him.  For he seems chary of putting his visitor to the trouble of repeating his late attentions.

“Ha!” he observes when he is in trim again.  “If you could have traced out the captain, Mr. George, it would have been the making of you.  If when you first came here, in consequence of our advertisement in the newspapers—­when I say ‘our,’ I’m alluding to the advertisements of my friend in the city, and one or two others who embark their capital in the same way, and are so friendly towards me as sometimes to give me a lift with my little pittance—­ if at that time you could have helped us, Mr. George, it would have been the making of you.”

“I was willing enough to be ‘made,’ as you call it,” says Mr. George, smoking not quite so placidly as before, for since the entrance of Judy he has been in some measure disturbed by a fascination, not of the admiring kind, which obliges him to look at her as she stands by her grandfather’s chair, “but on the whole, I am glad I wasn’t now.”

“Why, Mr. George?  In the name of—­of brimstone, why?” says Grandfather Smallweed with a plain appearance of exasperation.  (Brimstone apparently suggested by his eye lighting on Mrs. Smallweed in her slumber.)

“For two reasons, comrade.”

“And what two reasons, Mr. George?  In the name of the—­”

“Of our friend in the city?” suggests Mr. George, composedly drinking.

“Aye, if you like.  What two reasons?”

“In the first place,” returns Mr. George, but still looking at Judy as if she being so old and so like her grandfather it is indifferent which of the two he addresses, “you gentlemen took me in.  You advertised that Mr. Hawdon (Captain Hawdon, if you hold to the saying ‘Once a captain, always a captain’) was to hear of something to his advantage.”

“Well?” returns the old man shrilly and sharply.

“Well!” says Mr. George, smoking on.  “It wouldn’t have been much to his advantage to have been clapped into prison by the whole bill and judgment trade of London.”