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“I’ll put you the job in as low as possible,” said Mr Cowlishaw, persuasively.

But Scotchmen are not to be persuaded like that.

Mr Rannoch wrapped up his teeth and left.

What finally happened to those teeth Mr Cowlishaw never knew. But he satisfied himself that they were not advertised in the Signal.

III

Now, just as Mr Cowlishaw was personally conducting to the door the greatest goal-getter that the Five Towns had ever seen there happened another ring, and thus it fell out that Mr Cowlishaw found himself in the double difficulty of speeding his first visitor and welcoming his second all in the same breath. It is true that the second might imagine that the first was a client, but then the aspect of Mr Rannoch’s mouth, had it caught the eye of the second, was not reassuring. However, Mr Rannoch’s mouth happily did not catch the eye of the second.

The second was a visitor beyond Mr Cowlishaw’s hopes, no other than Mrs Simeon Clowes, landlady of the Turk’s Head and Mayoress of Hanbridge; a tall and well-built, handsome, downright woman, of something more than fifty and something less than sixty; the mother of five married daughters, the aunt of fourteen nephews and nieces, the grandam of seven, or it might be eight, assorted babies; in short, a lady of vast influence. After all, then, she had come to him! If only he could please her, he regarded his succession to his predecessor as definitely established and his fortune made. No person in Hanbridge with any yearnings for style would dream, he trusted, of going to any other dentist than the dentist patronized by Mrs Clowes.

She eyed him interrogatively and firmly. She probed into his character, and he felt himself pierced.

“You are Mr Cowlishaw?” she began.

“Good afternoon, Mrs Clowes,” he replied. “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.”

“I shall have to trouble you to take your bonnet off.”

So she removed her bonnet, and he took it as he might have taken his firstborn, and laid it gently to rest on his cabinet. Then he pushed the gas-bracket so that the light came through the large crystal sphere, and made the Mayoress blink.

“Now,” he said soothingly, “kindly open your mouth–wide.”

Like all women of strong and generous character, Mrs Simeon Clowes had a large mouth. She obediently extended it to dimensions which must be described as august, at the same time pointing with her gloved and chubby finger to a particular part of it.

“Yes, yes,” murmured Mr Cowlishaw, assuming a tranquillity which he did not feel. This was the first time that he had ever looked into the mouth of a Mayoress, and the prospect troubled him.

He put his little ivory-handled mirror into that mouth and studied its secrets.

“I see,” he said, withdrawing the mirror. “Exposed nerve. Quite simple. Merely wants stopping. When I’ve done with it the tooth will be as sound as ever it was. All your other teeth are excellent.”