 then -
the greens being only then to be considered as entirely off her mind - Mr.
Bagnet requests the trooper to state his case.
    This, Mr. George does with great discretion; appearing to address himself to
Mr. Bagnet, but having an eye solely on the old girl all the time, as Bagnet has
himself. She, equally discreet, busies herself with her needlework. The case
fully stated, Mr. Bagnet resorts to his standard artifice for the maintenance of
discipline.
    »That's the whole of it, is it, George?« says he.
    »That's the whole of it.«
    »You act according to my opinion?«
    »I shall be guided,« replies George, »entirely by it.«
    »Old girl,« says Mr. Bagnet, »give him my opinion. You know it. Tell him
what it is.«
    It is, that he cannot have too little to do with people who are too deep for
him, and cannot be too careful of interference with matters he does not
understand; that the plain rule, is to do nothing in the dark, to be a party to
nothing underhanded or mysterious, and never to put his foot where he cannot see
the ground. This, in effect, is Mr. Bagnet's opinion, as delivered through the
old girl; and it so relieves Mr. George's mind, by confirming his own opinion
and banishing his doubts, that he composes himself to smoke another pipe on that
exceptional occasion, and to have a talk over old times with the whole Bagnet
family, according to their various ranges of experience.
    Through these means it comes to pass, that Mr. George does not again rise to
his full height in that parlour until the time is drawing on when the bassoon
and fife are expected by a British public at the theatre; and as it takes time
even then for Mr. George, in his domestic character of Bluffy, to take leave of
Quebec and Malta, and insinuate a sponsorial shilling into the pocket of his
godson, with felicitations on his success in life, it is dark when Mr. George
again turns his face towards Lincoln's Inn Fields.
    »A family home,« he ruminates, as he marches along, »however small it is,
makes a man like me look lonely. But it's well I never made that evolution of
matrimony. I shouldn't have been fit for it. I am such a vagabond still, even at
my present time of life, that I couldn't
