“In a night-cap!” exclaims Phil, excited.

“In a nightcap—”

“And hobbling with a couple of sticks!” cries Phil, still more excited.

“With a couple of sticks. When—”

“When you stops, you know,” cries Phil, putting down his cup and saucer, and hastily removing his plate from his knees, “and says to me, ‘What, comrade! You have been in the wars!’ I didn’t say much to you, commander, then, for I was took by surprise, that a person so strong and healthy and bold as you was, should stop to speak to such a limping bag of bones as I was. But you says to me, says you, delivering it out of your chest as hearty as possible, so that it was like a glass of something hot, ‘What accident have you met with? You have been badly hurt. What’s amiss, old boy? Cheer up, and tell us about it!’ Cheer up! I was cheered already! I says as much to you, you says more to me, I says more to you, you says more to me, and here I am, commander! Here I am, commander!” cries Phil, who has started from his chair and unaccountably begun to sidle away. “If a mark’s wanted, or if it will improve the business, let the customers take aim at me. They can’t spoil my beauty. I’m all right. Come on! If they want a man to box at, let ’em box at me. Let ’em knock me well about the head. I don’t mind. If they want a light-weight, to be throwed for practice, Cornwall, Devonshire, or Lancashire, let ’em throw me. They won’t hurt me. I have been throwed, all sorts of styles, all my life!”

With this unexpected speech, energetically delivered, and accompanied by action illustrative of the various exercises referred to, Phil Squod shoulders his way round three sides of the gallery, and abruptly tacking off at his commander, makes a butt at him with his head, intended to express devotion to his service. He then begins to clear away the breakfast.

Mr George, after laughing cheerfully, and clapping him on the shoulder, assists in these arrangements, and helps to get the gallery into business order. That done, he takes a turn at the dumb-bells; and afterwards weighing himself, and opining that he is getting “too fleshy,” engages with great gravity in solitary broadsword practice. Meanwhile, Phil has fallen to work at his usual table, where he screws and unscrews, and cleans, and files, and whistles into small apertures, and blackens himself more and more, and seems to do and undo everything that can be done and undone about a gun.

Master and man are at length disturbed by footsteps in the passage, where they make an unusual sound, denoting the arrival of unusual company. These steps, advancing nearer and nearer to the gallery, bring into it a group, at first sight scarcely reconcilable with any day in the year but the fifth of November.

It consists of a limp and ugly figure carried in a chair by two bearers, and attended by a lean female with a face like a pinched mask, who might be expected immediately to recite the popular verses, commemorative of the time when they did contrive to blow Old England up alive, but for her keeping her lips tightly and defiantly closed as the chair is put down. At which point, the figure in it gasping, “O Lord! O dear me! I am shaken!” adds, “How de do, my dear friend, how de do?” Mr George then descries, in the procession, the venerable Mr Smallweed out for an airing, attended by his grand-daughter Judy as body-guard.

“Mr George, my dear friend,” says Grandfather Smallweed, removing his right arm from the neck of one of his bearers, whom he has nearly throttled coming along, “how de do? You’re surprised to see me, my dear friend.”

“I should hardly have been more surprised to seen your friend in the city,” returns Mr George.

“I am very seldom out,” pants Mr Smallweed. “I haven’t been out for many months. It’s inconvenient — and it comes expensive. But I longed so much to see you, my dear Mr George. How de do, sir?”

“I am well enough,” says Mr George. “I hope you are the same.”