and certain ideas which repeated themselves with a stupid persistence.
He was such an eminently practical man, that this disorder of his brain
troubled him more even than the thoughts that made the disorder. He sat
in the same attitude for a long while, scarcely conscious of Mrs.
Halliday's presence, not at all conscious of the progress of time.
Georgy had been right in her gloomy forebodings of bad behaviour on the
part of Mr. Halliday. It was nearly one o'clock when a loud double
knock announced that gentleman's return. The wind had been howling
drearily, and a sharp, slanting rain had been pattering against the
windows for the last half-hour, while Mrs. Halliday's breast had been
racked by the contending emotions of anxiety and indignation.

"I suppose he couldn't get a cab," she exclaimed, as the knock startled
her from her listening attitude--for however intently a midnight
watcher may be listening for the returning wanderer's knock, it is not
the less startling when it comes?--"and he has walked home through the
wet, and now he'll have a violent cold, I daresay," added Georgy
peevishly.

"Then it's lucky for him he's in a doctor's house," answered Mr.
Sheldon, with a smile. He was a handsome man, no doubt, according to
the popular idea of masculine perfection, but he had not a pleasant
smile. "I went through the regular routine, you know, and am as well
able to see a patient safely through a cold or fever as I am to make
him a set of teeth."

Mr. Halliday burst into the room at this moment, singing a fragment of
the "Chough and Crow" chorus, very much out of tune. He was in
boisterously high spirits, and very little the worse for liquor. He had
only walked from Covent Garden, he said, and had taken nothing but a