"Mr. Richardson," said Dan, "will you please pull my tooth? I don't want to go to Dr. Ryan. I know he'll hurt me awfully."
"Nobody can pull a tooth, Daniel, without inflicting pain. They are designed to stay in—the second crop."
"But you won't hurt me as much as he will. He won't care if he does hurt me. Besides, you haven't got such an awful-looking thing to pull 'em with as his is." Rich had purchased, with his other instruments, forceps of a modern pattern, while the doctor used the huge old corkscrew instruments. "Do, please, Mr. Richardson. I won't tell anybody; so you won't have your time taken up by boys running to you."
Rich put the instrument on the tooth Dan indicated, and took it out in a moment. Dan gave a fearful yell, and ran to the fire-place.
"I told you it would hurt you."
"I don't care. Dr. Ryan would have hurt me more."
Notwithstanding Dan's promise of secrecy, it got wind somehow, and Rich soon had considerable practice of that kind. But, as he had now made good progress in study, and the money was very acceptable, he became reconciled to it.
An opportunity was soon after this presented that Rich did not fail to improve. The people of the neighborhood were engaged in hauling a barn, and a young man, in attempting to fling a skid under the building while in motion, received a compound fracture of the thigh. Dr. Ryan was called. He sent for Dr. Slaughter, and took Rich with him, who required no solicitation, as it was the first opportunity he had enjoyed of witnessing an important operation.
The limb was taken off some distance above the knee, leaving that joint entire, it having escaped injury by being pressed into the mud. Weary of dissecting animals, Rich longed to obtain this limb. There it lay, a well-developed leg and part of the thigh of a young man. He took it in his hands after the operation was performed, and gloated over it as an antiquarian over a rare coin. His fingers itched, and he felt an intense desire to possess it.