"Yes, I am. Can I be of
service to you?"
"That depends," she said.
He asked her to step in, and in she stepped.
"Have you had any experience in taking teeth out?" she asked in the
surgery. Her hand stroked her left cheek.
"Oh yes," he said eagerly. "But, of course, we try to avoid extraction
as much as possible."
"If you're going to talk like that," she said coldly, and even bitterly,
"I'd better go."
He wondered what she was driving at.
"Naturally," he said, summoning all his latent powers of diplomacy,
"there are cases in which extraction is unfortunately necessary."
"How many teeth have you extracted?" she inquired.
"I really couldn't say," he lied. "Very many."
"Because," she said, "you don't look as if you could say 'Bo!' to a
goose."
He observed a gleam in her eye.
"I think I can say 'Bo!' to a goose," he said. She laughed.
"Don't fancy, Mr Cowlishaw, that if I laugh I'm not in the most horrible
pain. I am. When I tell you I couldn't go with Mr Clowes to the match--"
"Will you take this seat?" he said, indicating the chair of chairs;
"then I can examine."
She obeyed. "I do hate the horrid, velvety feeling of these chairs," she
said; "it's most creepy.
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