The dinner done, Mrs. Bagnet, assisted by the younger branches (who polish their own cups and platters, knives and forks), makes all the dinner garniture shine as brightly as before and puts it all away, first sweeping the hearth, to the end that Mr. Bagnet and the visitor may not be retarded in the smoking of their pipes.  These household cares involve much pattening and counter-pattening in the backyard and considerable use of a pail, which is finally so happy as to assist in the ablutions of Mrs. Bagnet herself.  That old girl reappearing by and by, quite fresh, and sitting down to her needlework, then and only then—­the greens being only then to be considered as entirely off her mind—­Mr. Bagnet requests the trooper to state his case.

This Mr. George does with great discretion, appearing to address himself to Mr. Bagnet, but having an eye solely on the old girl all the time, as Bagnet has himself.  She, equally discreet, busies herself with her needlework.  The case fully stated, Mr. Bagnet resorts to his standard artifice for the maintenance of discipline.

“That’s the whole of it, is it, George?” says he.

“That’s the whole of it.”

“You act according to my opinion?”

“I shall be guided,” replies George, “entirely by it.”

“Old girl,” says Mr. Bagnet, “give him my opinion.  You know it.  Tell him what it is.”

It is that he cannot have too little to do with people who are too deep for him and cannot be too careful of interference with matters he does not understand—­that the plain rule is to do nothing in the dark, to be a party to nothing underhanded or mysterious, and never to put his foot where he cannot see the ground.  This, in effect, is Mr. Bagnet’s opinion, as delivered through the old girl, and it so relieves Mr. George’s mind by confirming his own opinion and banishing his doubts that he composes himself to smoke another pipe on that exceptional occasion and to have a talk over old times with the whole Bagnet family, according to their various ranges of experience.

Through these means it comes to pass that Mr. George does not again rise to his full height in that parlour until the time is drawing on when the bassoon and fife are expected by a British public at the theatre; and as it takes time even then for Mr. George, in his domestic character of Bluffy, to take leave of Quebec and Malta and insinuate a sponsorial shilling into the pocket of his godson with felicitations on his success in life, it is dark when Mr. George again turns his face towards Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

“A family home,” he ruminates as he marches along, “however small it is, makes a man like me look lonely.  But it’s well I never made that evolution of matrimony.  I shouldn’t have been fit for it.  I am such a vagabond still, even at my present time of life, that I couldn’t hold to the gallery a month together if it was a regular pursuit or if I didn’t camp there, gipsy fashion.  Come!  I disgrace nobody and cumber nobody; that’s something.  I have not done that for many a long year!”