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 acquaintance; that he was a shining example of steadiness and sobriety; that he was on the sunnier side of thirty, a bachelor, and very good-looking; and that his household was comprised of a grim-visaged active old woman imported from Barlingford, a girl who ran errands, and a boy who opened the door, attended to the consulting-room, and did some mysterious work at odd times with a file and sundry queer lumps of plaster-of-paris, beeswax, and bone, in a dark little shed abutting on the yard at the back of the house.

This much had the inhabitants of Fitzgeorge-street discovered respecting Mr.
Sheldon when he had been amongst them four years; but they had discovered no more.