Birds of Prey | Page 6

a teacup. I'll manage easy enough.
Mr. and Mrs. Halliday will be having your room, I'll lay."
"Yes; give them the best room, by all means. I can sleep anywhere.
And now go downstairs and think it over, Nancy. I must get to my
work. I've some letters that must be written to-night."
Mrs. Woolper departed with her tray, gratified by her master's
unwonted familiarity, and not ill pleased by the thought of visitors.
They would cause a great deal of trouble, certainly; but the monotony
of Nancy's easy life had grown so oppressive to her as to render the
idea of any variety pleasing. And then there would be the pleasure of
making that iniquitous creature the London lass bestir herself, and there
would be furthermore the advantage of certain little perquisites which a
clever manager always secures to herself in a house where there is
much eating and drinking. Mr. Sheldon himself had lived like a modern
anchorite for the last four years; and Mrs. Woolper, who was pretty
well acquainted with the state of his finances, had pinched and
contrived for his benefit, or rather for the benefit of the black-eyed
baby she had nursed nine-and-twenty years before. For his sake she had
been careful and honest, willing to forego all the small profits to which
she held herself entitled; but if well-to-do people were going to share
her master's expenses, there would be no longer need for such
scrupulous integrity; and if things were rightly managed, Thomas
Halliday might be made to bear the entire cost of the household during
his month's visit on the Yorkshire system.
While Mrs. Woolper meditated upon her domestic duties, the master of
the domicile abandoned himself to reflections which were apparently of
a very serious character. He brought a leathern desk from a side-table,
unlocked it, and took out a quire of paper; but he made no further
advance towards the writing of those letters on account of which he had
dismissed his housekeeper. He sat, with his elbows on the table,
nibbling the end of a wooden penholder, and staring at the opposite
wall. His face looked pale and haggard in the light of the gas, and the

eyes, fixed in that vacant stare, had a feverish brightness.
Mr. Sheldon was a handsome man--eminently handsome, according to
the popular notion of masculine beauty; and if the popular ideal has
been a little vulgarised by the waxen gentlemen on whose
finely-moulded foreheads the wig-maker is wont to display the
specimens of his art, that is no discredit to Mr. Sheldon. His features
were regular; the nose a handsome aquiline; the mouth firm and well
modelled; the chin and jaw rather heavier than in the waxen ideal of the
hair-dresser; the forehead very prominent in the region of the
perceptives, but obviously wanting in the higher faculties. The eye of
the phrenologist, unaided by his fingers, must have failed to discover
the secrets of Mr. Sheldon's organisation; for one of the dentist's strong
points was his hair, which was very luxuriant, and which he wore in
artfully-arranged masses that passed for curls, but which owed their
undulating grace rather to a skilful manipulation than to any natural
tendency. It has been said that the rulers of the world are straight-haired
men; and Mr. Sheldon might have been a Napoleon III. so far as
regards this special attribute. His hair was of a dense black, and his
whiskers of the same sombre hue. These carefully-arranged whiskers
were another of the dentist's strong points; and the third strong point
was his teeth, the perfection whereof was a fine advertisement when
considered in a professional light. The teeth were rather too large and
square for a painter's or a poet's notion of beauty, and were apt to
suggest an unpleasant image of some sleek brindled creature crunching
human bones in an Indian jungle. But they were handsome teeth
notwithstanding, and their flashing whiteness made an effective
contrast to the clear sallow tint of the dentist's complexion.
Mr. Sheldon was a man of industrious habits,--fond indeed of work,
and distinguished by a persistent activity in the carrying out of any
labour he had planned for himself. He was not prone to the indulgence
of idle reveries or agreeable day-dreams. Thought with him was labour;
it was the "thinking out" of future work to be done, and it was an
operation as precise and mathematical as the actual labour that resulted
therefrom. The contents of his brain were as well kept as a careful
trader's ledger. He had his thoughts docketed and indexed, and rarely

wasted the smallest portion of his time in searching for an idea. Tonight
he sat thinking until he was interrupted by a loud double knock, which
was evidently familiar to him, for he