oney upon some Stock-Exchange hazard, and levant to
Australia when it was all swamped. If you can't trust me, Georgy, I'll
let you see that I can trust you", added Tom reproachfully.

Whereupon poor weak little Mrs. Halliday murmured plaintively that she
did not want fortunes or life insurances, but that she wanted her
husband to stay at home, content with the calm and rather sleepy
delights of his own fireside. Poor Tom was wont to promise amendment,
and would keep his promise faithfully so long as no supreme temptation,
in the shape of a visit from some friend of the jolly-good-fellow
species, arose to vanquish his good resolutions. But a good-tempered,
generous-hearted young man who farms his own land, has three or four
good horses in his stable, a decent cellar of honest port and
sherry--"none of your wishy-washy sour stuff in the way of hock or
claret," cried Tom Halliday--and a very comfortable balance at his
banker's, finds it no easy matter to shake off friends of the
jolly-good-fellow fraternity.

In London Mr. Halliday found the spirit of jolly-dog-ism rampant.
George Sheldon had always been his favourite of these two brothers; and
it was George who lured him from the safe shelter of Fitzgeorge-street
and took him to mysterious haunts, whence he returned long after
midnight, boisterous of manner and unsteady of gait, and with garments
reeking of stale tobacco-smoke.

He was always good-tempered, even after these diabolical orgies on some
unknown Brocken, and protested indistinctly that there was no
harm,--"'pon m' wor', ye know, ol' gur'! Geor' an' me--half-doz'
oyst'r--c'gar--botl' p'l ale--str't home," and much more to the same
effect. When did any married man ever take more than half a dozen
oysters--or take any undomestic pleasure for his own satisfaction? It
is always those incorrigible bachelors, Thomas, Richard, or Henry, who
hinder the unwilling Benedick from returning to his sacred Lares and
Penates.

Poor Georgy was not to be pacified by protestations about oysters and
cigars from the lips of a husband who was thick of utterance, and who
betrayed a general imbecility of mind and unsteadiness of body. This
London excursion, which had begun in sunshine, threatened to end in
storm and darkness. Georgy Sheldon and his set had taken possession of
the young farmer; and Georgy had no better amusement in the long
blustrous March evenings than to sit at her work under the flaming gas
in Mr. Sheldon's dra