daughter of a Barlingford attorney, who
lived next door to the Barlingford dentist, Philip Sheldon's father.
Philip and the girl had been playfellows in the long-walled gardens
behind the two houses, and there had been a brotherly and sisterly
intimacy between the juvenile members of the two families. But when
Philip and Georgina met at the Barlingford tea-parties in later years,
the parental powers frowned upon any renewal of that childish
friendship. Miss Cradock had no portion, and the worthy solicitor her
father was a prudent man, who was apt to look for the promise of
domestic happiness in the plate-basket and the linen-press, rather than
for such superficial qualifications as black whiskers and white teeth.
So poor Philip was "thrown over the bridge," as he said himself, and
Georgy Cradock married Mr. Halliday, with all attendant ceremony and
splendour, according to the "lights" of Barlingford gentry.

But this provincial bride's story was no passionate record of anguish
and tears. The Barlingford Juliet had liked Romeo as much as she was
capable of liking any one; but when Papa Capulet insisted on her union
with Paris, she accepted her destiny with decent resignation, and, in
the absence of any sympathetic father confessor, was fain to seek
consolation from a more mundane individual in the person of the
Barlingford milliner. Nor did Philip Sheldon give evidence of any
extravagant despair. His father was something of a doctor as well as a
dentist; and there were plenty of dark little phials lurking on the
shelves of his surgery in which the young man could have found "mortal
drugs" without the aid of the apothecary, had he been so minded.
Happily no such desperate idea ever occurred to him in connection with
his grief. He held himself sulkily aloof from Mr. and Mrs. Halliday for
some time after their marriage, and allowed people to see that he
considered himself very hardly used; but Prudence, which had always
been Philip Sheldon's counsellor, proved herself also his consoler in
this crisis of his life. A careful consideration of his own interests
led him to perceive that the successful result of his love-suit would
have been about the worst thing that could have happened to him.

Georgina had no money. All was said in that. As the young dentist's
worldly wisdom ripened with experience, he discovered that the worldly
ease of the best man in Barlingford was something like that of a
canary-bird who inhabits a clean