were unfailing as a perennial spring; and that the unsullied snow of Mr.
Sheldon's shirt-fronts retained its primeval whiteness. Wonderland
suspicion gave place to a half-envious respect. Whether much custom
came to the dentist no one could decide. There is no trade or
profession in which the struggling man will not receive some faint show
of encouragement. Pedestrians of agonised aspect, with handkerchiefs
held convulsively before their mouths, were seen to rush wildly towards
the dentist's door, then pause for a moment, stricken by a sudden
terror, and anon feebly pull the handle of an inflexible bell. Cabs had
been heard to approach that fatal door--generally on wet days; for
there seems to be a kind of fitness in the choice of damp and dismal
weather for the extraction of teeth. Elderly ladies and gentlemen had
been known to come many times to the Fitzgeorgian mansion. There was a
legend of an old lady who had been seen to arrive in a brougham,
especially weird and nut-crackery of aspect, and to depart half an hour
afterwards a beautified and renovated creature. One half of the
Fitzgeorgians declared that Mr. Sheldon had established a very nice
little practice, and was saving money; while the other half were still
despondent, and opined that the dentist had private property, and was
eating up his little capital. It transpired in course of time that Mr.
Sheldon had left his native town of Little Barlingford, in Yorkshire,
where his father and grandfather had been surgeon-dentists before him,
to establish himself in London. He had disposed advantageously of an
excellent practice, and had transferred his household goods--the
ponderous chairs and tables, the wood whereof had deepened and mellowed
in tint under the indefatigable hand of his grandmother--to the
metropolis, speculating on the chance that his talents and appearance,
address and industry, could scarcely fail to achieve a position. It
was further known that he had a brother, an attorney in Gray's Inn,
who visited him very frequently; that he had few other friends or