“And you can refuse, you mean, eh?  Or not you so much, perhaps, as your friend in the city?  Ha ha ha!”

“Ha ha ha!” echoes Grandfather Smallweed.  In such a very hard manner and with eyes so particularly green that Mr. Bagnet’s natural gravity is much deepened by the contemplation of that venerable man.

“Come!” says the sanguine George.  “I am glad to find we can be pleasant, because I want to arrange this pleasantly.  Here’s my friend Bagnet, and here am I. We’ll settle the matter on the spot, if you please, Mr. Smallweed, in the usual way.  And you’ll ease my friend Bagnet’s mind, and his family’s mind, a good deal if you’ll just mention to him what our understanding is.”

Here some shrill spectre cries out in a mocking manner, “Oh, good gracious!  Oh!” Unless, indeed, it be the sportive Judy, who is found to be silent when the startled visitors look round, but whose chin has received a recent toss, expressive of derision and contempt.  Mr. Bagnet’s gravity becomes yet more profound.

“But I think you asked me, Mr. George”—­old Smallweed, who all this time has had the pipe in his hand, is the speaker now—­“I think you asked me, what did the letter mean?”

“Why, yes, I did,” returns the trooper in his off-hand way, “but I don’t care to know particularly, if it’s all correct and pleasant.”

Mr. Smallweed, purposely balking himself in an aim at the trooper’s head, throws the pipe on the ground and breaks it to pieces.

“That’s what it means, my dear friend.  I’ll smash you.  I’ll crumble you.  I’ll powder you.  Go to the devil!”

The two friends rise and look at one another.  Mr. Bagnet’s gravity has now attained its profoundest point.

“Go to the devil!” repeats the old man.  “I’ll have no more of your pipe-smokings and swaggerings.  What?  You’re an independent dragoon, too!  Go to my lawyer (you remember where; you have been there before) and show your independence now, will you?  Come, my dear friend, there’s a chance for you.  Open the street door, Judy; put these blusterers out!  Call in help if they don’t go.  Put ’em out!”

He vociferates this so loudly that Mr. Bagnet, laying his hands on the shoulders of his comrade before the latter can recover from his amazement, gets him on the outside of the street door, which is instantly slammed by the triumphant Judy.  Utterly confounded, Mr. George awhile stands looking at the knocker.  Mr. Bagnet, in a perfect abyss of gravity, walks up and down before the little parlour window like a sentry and looks in every time he passes, apparently revolving something in his mind.

“Come, Mat,” says Mr. George when he has recovered himself, “we must try the lawyer.  Now, what do you think of this rascal?”

Mr. Bagnet, stopping to take a farewell look into the parlour, replies with one shake of his head directed at the interior, “If my old girl had been here—­I’d have told him!” Having so discharged himself of the subject of his cogitations, he falls into step and marches off with the trooper, shoulder to shoulder.