acquaintance; that he was a shining example of steadiness and sobriety;
that he was on the sunnier side of thirty, a bachelor, and very
good-looking; and that his household was comprised of a grim-visaged
active old woman imported from Barlingford, a girl who ran errands, and
a boy who opened the door, attended to the consulting-room, and did some
mysterious work at odd times with a file and sundry queer lumps of
plaster-of-paris, beeswax, and bone, in a dark little shed abutting on
the yard at the back of the house. This much had the inhabitants of
Fitzgeorge-street discovered respecting Mr. Sheldon when he had been
amongst them four years; but they had discovered no more. He had made
no local acquaintances, nor had he sought to make any. Those of his
neighbours who had seen the interior of his house had entered it as
patients. They left it as much pleased with Mr. Sheldon as one can be
with a man at whose hands one has just undergone martyrdom, and
circulated a very flattering report of the dentist's agreeable
manners and delicate white handkerchief, fragrant with the odour of
eau-de-Cologne. For the rest, Philip Sheldon lived his own life, and
dreamed his own dreams. His opposite neighbours, who watched him on
sultry summer evenings as he lounged near an open window smoking his
cigar, had no more knowledge of his thoughts and fancies than they
might have had if he had been a Calmuck Tartar or an Abyssinian chief.




CHAPTER II.

PHILIP SHELDON READS THE "LANCET."