“I can certify at all events that he is not anybody else’s,” returns Mrs. Bagnet, laughing.

“Well, you do surprise me!  Yet he’s like you, there’s no denying.  Lord, he’s wonderfully like you!  But about what you may call the brow, you know, there his father comes out!” Mr. Bucket compares the faces with one eye shut up, while Mr. Bagnet smokes in stolid satisfaction.

This is an opportunity for Mrs. Bagnet to inform him that the boy is George’s godson.

“George’s godson, is he?” rejoins Mr. Bucket with extreme cordiality.  “I must shake hands over again with George’s godson.  Godfather and godson do credit to one another.  And what do you intend to make of him, ma’am?  Does he show any turn for any musical instrument?”

Mr. Bagnet suddenly interposes, “Plays the fife.  Beautiful.”

“Would you believe it, governor,” says Mr. Bucket, struck by the coincidence, “that when I was a boy I played the fife myself?  Not in a scientific way, as I expect he does, but by ear.  Lord bless you!  ’British Grenadiers’—­there’s a tune to warm an Englishman up!  Could you give us ‘British Grenadiers,’ my fine fellow?”

Nothing could be more acceptable to the little circle than this call upon young Woolwich, who immediately fetches his fife and performs the stirring melody, during which performance Mr. Bucket, much enlivened, beats time and never falls to come in sharp with the burden, “British Gra-a-anadeers!” In short, he shows so much musical taste that Mr. Bagnet actually takes his pipe from his lips to express his conviction that he is a singer.  Mr. Bucket receives the harmonious impeachment so modestly, confessing how that he did once chaunt a little, for the expression of the feelings of his own bosom, and with no presumptuous idea of entertaining his friends, that he is asked to sing.  Not to be behindhand in the sociality of the evening, he complies and gives them “Believe Me, if All Those Endearing Young Charms.”  This ballad, he informs Mrs. Bagnet, he considers to have been his most powerful ally in moving the heart of Mrs. Bucket when a maiden, and inducing her to approach the altar—­Mr. Bucket’s own words are “to come up to the scratch.”

This sparkling stranger is such a new and agreeable feature in the evening that Mr. George, who testified no great emotions of pleasure on his entrance, begins, in spite of himself, to be rather proud of him.  He is so friendly, is a man of so many resources, and so easy to get on with, that it is something to have made him known there.  Mr. Bagnet becomes, after another pipe, so sensible of the value of his acquaintance that he solicits the honour of his company on the old girl’s next birthday.  If anything can more closely cement and consolidate the esteem which Mr. Bucket has formed for the family, it is the discovery of the nature of the occasion.  He drinks to Mrs. Bagnet with a warmth approaching