On this present birthday, Mr. Bagnet has accomplished the usual preliminaries.
He has bought two specimens of poultry, which, if there be any truth in adages,
were certainly not caught with chaff, to be prepared for the spit; he has amazed
and rejoiced the family by their unlooked-for production; he is himself directing
the roasting of the poultry; and Mrs. Bagnet, with her wholesome brown fingers
itching to prevent what she sees going wrong, sits in her gown of ceremony, an
honoured guest.

Quebec and Malta lay the cloth for dinner, while Woolwich, serving, as beseems
him, under his father, keeps the fowls revolving. To these young sellions Mrs.
Bagnet occasionally imparts a wink, or a shake of the head, or a crooked face, as
they made mistakes.

"At half-after one." Says Mr. Bagnet. "To the minute. They'll be done."

Mrs. Bagnet, with anguish, beholds one of them at a stand-still before the fire,
and beginning to burn.

"You shall have a dinner, old girl," says Mr. Bagnet. "Fit for a queen."

Mrs. Bagnet shows her white teeth cheerfully, but to the perception of her son,
betrays so much uneasiness of spirit, that he is impelled by the dictates of affection
to ask her, with his eyes, what is the matter?--thus standing, with his eyes wide
open, more oblivious of the fowls than before, and not affording the least hope of
a return to consciousness. Fortunately, his elder sister perceives the cause of the
agitation in Mrs. Bagnet's breast, and with an admonitory poke recalls him. The
stopped fowls going round again, Mrs. Bagnet closes her eyes, in the intensity of
her relief.

" George will look us up," says Mr. Bagnet. "At half-after four. To the
moment. How many years, old girl. Has George looked us up. This after-
noon?"

"Ah, Lignum, Lignum, as many as make an old woman of a young one, I
begin to think. Just about that, and no less," returns Mrs. Bagnet, laughing,
and shaking her head.

"Old girl," says Mr. Bagnet, "Never mind. You'd be as young as ever you
was. If you wasn't younger. Which you are. As everybody knows."

Quebec and Malta here exclaim, with clapping of hands, that Bluffy is sure to
bring mother something, and begin to speculate on what it will be.

"Do you know, Lignum," says Mrs. Bagnet, casting a glance on the table-
cloth, and winking, "salt!" at Malta with her right eye, and shaking the pepper
away flora Quebec with her head; "I begin to think George is in the roving way
again."

" George," returns Mr. Bagnet, "will never desert. And leave his old com-
rade. In the lurch. Don't be afraid of it."

"No, Lignum. No. I don't say he will. I don't think he will. But if he
could get over this money-trouble of his, I believe he would be off."

Mr. Bagnet asks why?

"Well," returns his wife, considering. " George seems to me to be getting not
a little impatient and restless. I don't say but what he's as free as ever. Of
course he must be free, or he wouldn't be George; but he smarts, and seems put
out."

"He's extra-drilled," says Mr. Bagnet. "By a lawyer. Who would put the
devil out."

"There's something in that," his wife assents; "but so it is, Lignum."

Further conversation is prevented, for the time, by the necessity under which
Mr. Bagnet finds himself of directing the whole force of his mind to the dinner,
which is a little endangered by the dry humour of the fowls in not yielding any
gravy, and also by the made-gravy acquiring no flavour, and turning out of a flaxen

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