Birds of Prey | Page 9

"so I'll take myself off. I told you how
uncommonly seedy you were looking when I first came in. When do
you expect Tom and his wife?"
"At the beginning of next week."
"So soon! Well, good-night, old fellow; I shall see you before they
come, I daresay. You might as well drop in upon me at my place
to-morrow night. I'm hard at work on a job."
"Your old kind of work?"
"O, yes. I don't get much work of any other kind."
"And I'm afraid you'll never get much good out of that."
"I don't know. A man who sits down to whist may have a run of ill-luck
before he gets a decent hand; but the good cards are sure to come if he

only sits long enough. Every man has his chance, depend upon it, Phil,
if he knows how to watch for it; but there are so many men who get
tired and go to sleep before their chances come to them. I've wasted a
good deal of time, and a good deal of labour; but the ace of trumps is in
the pack, and it must turn up sooner or later. Ta-ta."
George Sheldon nodded and departed, whistling gaily as he walked
away from his brother's door. Philip heard him, and turned his chair to
the fire with a movement of impatience.
"You may be uncommonly clever, my dear George," soliloquised the
dentist, "but you'll never make a fortune by reading wills and hunting in
parish-registers for heirs-at-law. A big lump of money is not very likely
to go a-begging while any one who can fudge up the faintest pretence
of a claim to it is above ground. No, no, my lad, you must find a better
way than that before you'll make your fortune."
The fire had burnt low again, and Mr. Sheldon sat staring gloomily at
the blackening coals. Things were very bad with him--he had not cared
to confess how bad they were, when he had discussed his affairs with
his brother. Those neighbours and passers-by who admired the trim
brightness of the dentist's abode had no suspicion that the master of that
respectable house was in the hands of the Jews, and that the hearthstone
which whitened his door-step was paid for out of Israelitish coffers.
The dentist's philosophy was all of this world, and he knew that the
soldier of fortune, who would fain be a conqueror in the great battle,
must needs keep his plumage undrabbled and the golden facings of his
uniform untarnished, let his wounds be never so desperate.
Having found his attempt to establish a practice in Fitzgeorge-street a
failure, the only course open to Mr. Sheldon, as a man of the world,
was to transfer his failure to somebody else, with more or less profit to
himself. To this end he preserved the spotless purity of his muslin
curtains, though the starch that stiffened them and the
bleaching-powder that whitened them were bought with money for
which he was to pay sixty per cent. To this end he nursed that wan
shadow of a practice, and sustained that appearance of respectability
which, in a world where appearance stands for so much, is in itself a

kind of capital. It certainly was dull dreary work to hold the citadel of
No. 14 Fitzgeorge-street, against the besieger Poverty; but the dentist
stood his ground pertinaciously, knowing that if he only waited long
enough, the dupe who was to be his victim would come, and knowing
also that there might arrive a day when it would be very useful for him
to be able to refer to four years' unblemished respectability as a
Bloomsbury householder. He had his lines set in several shady places
for that unhappy fish with a small capital, and he had been tantalised by
more than one nibble; but he made no open show of his desire to sell
his business--since a business that is obviously in the market seems
scarcely worth any man's purchase.
Things had of late grown worse with him every day; for every interval
of twenty-four hours sinks a man so much the deeper in the mire when
renewed accommodation-bills with his name upon them are ripening in
the iron safes of Judah. Philip Sheldon found himself sinking gradually
and almost imperceptibly into that bottomless pit of difficulty in whose
black depths the demon Insolvency holds his dreary court. While his
little capital lasted he had kept himself clear of debt, but that being
exhausted, and his practice growing worse day by day, he had been fain
to seek assistance from money-lenders; and now even the
money-lenders were tired of him. The chair in which he sat, the poker
which he swung slowly to and fro as he bent over his