Mr. Bagnet, otherwise as immovable as a pump or a lamp-post, puts his large right hand on the top of his bald head as if to defend it from a shower-bath and looks with great uneasiness at Mrs. Bagnet.

“George,” says that old girl, “I wonder at you!  George, I am ashamed of you!  George, I couldn’t have believed you would have done it!  I always knew you to be a rolling stone that gathered no moss, but I never thought you would have taken away what little moss there was for Bagnet and the children to lie upon.  You know what a hard-working, steady-going chap he is.  You know what Quebec and Malta and Woolwich are, and I never did think you would, or could, have had the heart to serve us so.  Oh, George!” Mrs. Bagnet gathers up her cloak to wipe her eyes on in a very genuine manner, “How could you do it?”

Mrs. Bagnet ceasing, Mr. Bagnet removes his hand from his head as if the shower-bath were over and looks disconsolately at Mr. George, who has turned quite white and looks distressfully at the grey cloak and straw bonnet.

“Mat,” says the trooper in a subdued voice, addressing him but still looking at his wife, “I am sorry you take it so much to heart, because I do hope it’s not so bad as that comes to.  I certainly have, this morning, received this letter”—­which he reads aloud—­“but I hope it may be set right yet.  As to a rolling stone, why, what you say is true.  I am a rolling stone, and I never rolled in anybody’s way, I fully believe, that I rolled the least good to.  But it’s impossible for an old vagabond comrade to like your wife and family better than I like ’em, Mat, and I trust you’ll look upon me as forgivingly as you can.  Don’t think I’ve kept anything from you.  I haven’t had the letter more than a quarter of an hour.”

“Old girl,” murmurs Mr. Bagnet after a short silence, “will you tell him my opinion?”

“Oh!  Why didn’t he marry,” Mrs. Bagnet answers, half laughing and half crying, “Joe Pouch’s widder in North America?  Then he wouldn’t have got himself into these troubles.”

“The old girl,” says Mr. Bagnet, “puts it correct—­why didn’t you?”

“Well, she has a better husband by this time, I hope,” returns the trooper.  “Anyhow, here I stand, this present day, not married to Joe Pouch’s widder.  What shall I do?  You see all I have got about me.  It’s not mine; it’s yours.  Give the word, and I’ll sell off every morsel.  If I could have hoped it would have brought in nearly the sum wanted, I’d have sold all long ago.  Don’t believe that I’ll leave you or yours in the lurch, Mat.  I’d sell myself first.  I only wish,” says the trooper, giving himself a disparaging blow in the chest, “that I knew of any one who’d buy such a second-hand piece of old stores.”

“Old girl,” murmurs Mr. Bagnet, “give him another bit of my mind.”

“George,” says the old girl, “you are not so much to be blamed, on full consideration, except for ever taking this business without the means.”