on, 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 hearth, were not his own. One of
his Jewish creditors had a bill of sale on his furniture, and he might
come home any day to find the auctioneer's bills plastered against the
wall of his house, and the auctioneer's clerk busy with the catalogue
of his possessions. If the expected victim came now to buy his
practice, the sacrifice would be made too late to serve his interest.
The men who had lent him the money would be the sole gainers by the
bargain.

Seldom does a man find himself