took their pleasure together on those rare occasions when
they were weak enough to waste time upon unprofitable pleasure; but
neither of them would have comprehended the possibility of anything
beyond this.

"Well, old fellow," said George, "I'm glad you're back again. You're
looking rather seedy, though. I suppose you knocked about a good deal
down there?"

"I had a night or two of it with Halliday and the old set. He's going
it rather fast."

"Humph!" muttered Mr. Sheldon the younger; "it's a pity he doesn't go
it a little faster, and go off the hooks altogether, so that you might
marry Georgy."

"How do I know that Georgy would have me, if he did leave her a widow?"
asked Philip dubiously.

"O, she'd have you fast enough. She used to be very sweet upon you
before she married Tom; and even if she has forgotten all that, she'd
have you if you asked her. She'd be afraid to say no. She was always
more or less afraid of you, you know, Phil."

"I don't know about that. She was a nice little thing enough; but she
knew how to drop a poor sweetheart and take up with a rich one, in
spite of her simplicity."

"O, that was the old parties' doing. Georgy would have jumped into a
cauldron of boiling oil if her mother and father had told her she must
do it. Don't you remember when we were children together how afraid she
used to be of spoiling her frocks? I don't believe she married Tom
Halliday of her own free will, any more than she stood in the corner of
her own free will after she'd torn her frock, as I've seen her stand
twenty times. She stood in the corner because they told her she must;
and she married Tom for the same reason, and I don't suppose she's been
particularly happy with him."

"Well, that's her look-out," answered Philip gloomily; "I know I want a
rich wife badly enough. Things are about as bad with me as they can be."

"I suppose they _are_ rather piscatorial. The elderly dowagers don't
come up to time, eh? Very few orders for the complete set at
ten-pound-ten?"

"I took about seventy pounds last year," said the dentist, "and my
expenses are something like five pounds a week. I've been making up the
deficiency out of the money I got for the Barlingford business,
thinking I should be able to stand out and make a connection; but the
connection gets more disconnected every year. I suppose people came to
me at first for the novelty of the thing, for I had a sprinkling of
decent patients for the first tw