Mrs. Rakestraw applied the laudanum to Bill's molar, but as it did no kind of good, old grandmother proposed a poultice; and soon poor Bill's head and cheek were done up in mush, while he groaned and grunted and started for the store, every body gaping at his swollen countenance as though he was a rare curiosity.
"Halloo, Bill!" says old Firelock, the gunsmith, as Bill was going by his shop; "got a bag in your calabash, or got the tooth-ache?"
Bill looked daggers at old Firelock, and by a nod of his head intimated the cause of his distress.
"O, that all? Come in; I'll stop it in a minute and a half; sit down, I'll fix it—I've cured hundreds," says Firelock.
"What are you—O-h-h, dear! what are you going to do?" says Bill, eyeing the wire, and lamp in which Firelock was heating the wire.
"Burn out the marrow of the tooth—'twill never trouble you again—I've cured hundreds that way! Don't be afeared—you won't feel it but a moment. Sit still, keep cool!" says Firelock.
"Cool?" with a hot wire in his tooth! But Bill, being already intensely crucified, and assured of Firelock's skill, took his head out of the mush-plaster, opened his jaws, and Firelock, admonishing him to "keep cool," crowded the hot, sizzling wire on to the tin foil jammed into the hollow by Wangbanger, and gave it a twist clear through the melted tin to the exposed nerve. Bill jumped, bit off the wire, burnt his tongue, and knocked Firelock nearly through the partition of his shop; and so frightened Monsieur Savon, the little barber next door, that he rushed out into the street, crying—
"Mon Dieu! mon Dieu! Ze zundair strike my shop!"
Bill was stone dead—Firelock crippled. The apothecary over the way came in, picked up poor Bill, applied some camphor to his nose, and brought him back to life, and—the pangs of tooth-ache!
"Kreasote!" says Squills, the 'pothecary. "I'll ease your pain, Mr. Whiffletree, in a second!"