“Now, George,” says Mrs Bagnet, briskly, “here we are, Lignum and myself;” she often speaks of her husband by this appellation, on account, as it is supposed, of Lignum Vitæ having been his old regimental nickname when they first became acquainted, in compliment to the extreme hardness and toughness of his physiognomy; “just looked in, we have, to make it all correct as usual about that security. Give him the new bill to sign, George, and he’ll sign it like a man.”

“I was coming to you this morning,” observes the trooper, reluctantly.

“Yes, we thought you’d come to us this morning, but we turned out early, and left Woolwich, the best of boys, to mind his sisters, and came to you instead — as you see! For Lignum, he’s tied so close now, and gets so little exercise, that a walk does him good. But what’s the matter, George?” asks Mrs Bagnet, stopping in her cheerful talk. “You don’t look yourself.”

“I am not quite myself,” returns the trooper; “I have been a little put out, Mrs Bagnet.”

Her bright quick eye catches the truth directly. “George!” holding up her forefinger. “Don’t tell me there’s anything wrong about that security of Lignum’s! Don’t do it, George, on account of the children!”

The trooper looks at her with a troubled visage.

“George,” says Mrs Bagnet, using both her arms for emphasis, and occasionally bringing down her open hands upon her knees. “If you have allowed anything wrong to come to that security of Lignum’s, and if you have let him in for it, and if you have put us in danger of being sold up — and I see sold up in your face, George, as plain as print — you have done a shameful action, and have deceived us cruelly. I tell you, cruelly, George. There!”

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 sone 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. O 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 Baguet, “puts it correct — why didn’t you?”