and in this book lie read with close attention until the Bloomsbury
clocks struck three.




CHAPTER III.

MR. AND MRS. HALLIDAY.


Mr. Sheldon's visitors arrived in due course. They were provincial
people of the middle class, accounted monstrously genteel in their own
neighbourhood, but in nowise resembling Londoners of the same rank.

Mr. Thomas Halliday was a big, loud-spoken, good-tempered Yorkshireman,
who had inherited a comfortable little estate from a plodding,
money-making father, and for whom life had been very easy. He was a
farmer, and nothing but a farmer; a man for whom the supremest pleasure
of existence was a cattle-show or a country horse-fair. The farm upon
which he had been born and brought up was situated about six miles from
Barlingford, and all the delights of his boyhood and youth were
associated with that small market town. He and the two Sheldons had
been schoolfellows, and afterwards boon companions, taking such
pleasure as was obtainable in Barlingford together; flirting with the
same provincial beauties at prim tea-parties in the winter, and getting
up friendly picnics in the summer--picnics at which eating and drinking
were the leading features of the day's entertainment. Mr. Halliday had
always regarded George and Philip Sheldon with that reverential
admiration which a stupid man, who is conscious of his own mental