…— so beautiful” that I thought I should never tire looking at her. Pooh! Lil, you needn’t be jealous, old girl! She is none of my sort, anyhow.”Now!” she exclaimed with a queer kind of snarl, as she took off the glove of her left hand so as to show me the tell-tale band of gold on the third finger — ” now, Mr. Bailey, are you satisfied ? There is nothing of the missionary about me, is there?” And when I saw the long, pointed nails, pink and polished like sea-shells, just as I’ve always been told they do them at the lady-barber’s, I coughed. Observe my astuteness, Lil. I saw now that she was no prig from a church or chapel, but a member of what folks call “The Smart Set.” Yet how did she know Mr. Towell, and what brought her here? Was she one of us…

…held a huge pair of forceps, and in the other the needle of the whirling instrument used for boring holes in teeth prior to filling them. ‘I am Paul’ he said, ‘ and it is my unpleasant task to attend to your mouth every day. I shall first of all extract your teeth, then replace them, and, lastly, fill them. It will hurt you frightfully, but you must be patient; and I shall keep on at it till you cease swearing and begin of your own accord to repeatThe Old Hundredth, when your punishment will cease, and you will find yourself on the high road to Heaven. Now!’ And here I could stop him, he thinks the forceps into my mouth and began pulling. Pain! The pain was unendurable, inconceivable! All my previous sufferings were as nothing to it. And with the extraction of each tooth it increased. At last…