cage and is supplied with abundant
seed and water. The cage is eminently comfortable, and the sleepy,
respectable, elderly bird sighs for no better abiding-place, no wider
prospect than that patch of the universe which he sees between the
bars. But now and then there is hatched a wild young fledgeling, which
beats its wings against the inexorable wires, and would fain soar away
into that wide outer world, to prosper or perish in its freedom.

Before Georgy had been married a year, her sometime lover had fully
resigned himself to the existing state of things, and was on the best
possible terms with his friend Tom. He could eat his dinner in the
comfortable house at Hyley with an excellent appetite; for there was a
gulf between him and his old love far wider than any that had been dug
by that ceremonial in the parish church of Barlingford. Philip Sheldon
had awakened to the consciousness that life in his native town was
little more than a kind of animal vegetation--the life of some pulpy
invertebrate creature, which sprawls helplessly upon the sands whereon
the wave has deposited it, and may be cloven in half without feeling
itself noticeably worse for the operation. He had awakened to the
knowledge that there was a wider and more agreeable world beyond that
little provincial borough, and that a handsome face and figure and a
vigorous intellect were commodities for which there must be some kind
of market.

Once convinced of the utter worthlessness of his prospects in
Barlingford, Mr. Sheldon turned his eyes Londonwards; and his father
happening at the same time very conveniently to depart this life,
Philip, the son and heir, disposed of the business to an aspiring young
practitioner, and came to the metropolis, where he made that futile
attempt to establish himself which has been described.

The dentist had wasted four years in London, and ten years had gone by
since Georgy's wedding; and now for the first time he had an
opportunity of witnessing the domestic happiness or the domestic misery
of the woman who had jilted him, and the man who had been his
successful rival. He set himself to watch them with the cool
deliberation of a social anatomist, and he experienced very little
difficulty in the performance of this moral dissection. They were
established under his roof, his companions at every meal; and they were
a kind of people who discuss their grievances and indulge in their
"little differences" with perfect freed