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 drawing-room, while that gentleman--who rarely joined
in the dissipations of his friend and his brother--occupied himself
with mechanical dentistry in the chamber of torture below.