"But I'm not going to the dentist and let him pull it!" cried the boy, holding his hand over his mouth. "And I'm not going to let anybody in this house pull it, either! So there!" He ran and hid himself in a corner. Girls aren't that way when they have the toothache—only boys.
"Perhaps the tooth will not need pulling," said Mother, as she looked at the boy and saw how much pain he had.
"That's so!" exclaimed Grandma, who was trying to think of some way in which to help the boy. "Maybe the dentist can make a little hole in your tooth, Sonny, and fill the hole with cement, as the man filled the hole in our sidewalk, and then all your pain will stop."
"No, I'm not going to the dentist! I'm not going, I tell you!" cried Sonny. And I think he stamped his foot on the floor, the least little bit. It may have been that he saw a tack sticking up, and wanted to hammer it down with his shoe. But I am afraid it was a stamp of his foot; and afterward that boy was sorry.
But, anyhow, his tooth kept on aching, and it was the kind called "jumping," for it was worse at one time than another. Sometimes the boy thought the pain jumped from one side of his tongue to the other side, and again it seemed that it leaped away up to the roof of his mouth.
The toothache even seemed to turn somersaults and peppersaults, and once it appeared to jump over backward. But it never completely jumped away, which is what the boy wished it would do.
"You'd better let me take you to the dentist's," said his Mother. "He'll either fix the tooth so it won't ache any more, or he'll take it out, so a new tooth will grow in. And, really, the pain the dentist may cause will only be a little one, and it will be all over in a moment. While your tooth may ache all night."
"No, I'm not going to the dentist! I'm not going!" cried Sonny boy, and then again he acted just as if there were a tack in the carpet that needed hammering down with his foot.
Now it was about this time that Uncle Wiggily Longears, the bunny rabbit gentleman, was hopping from his hollow stump bungalow in the woods to go look for an adventure. But, as yet, Uncle Wiggily knew nothing about the boy with the toothache. That came a little later.
"Are you going to be gone long?" asked Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper, of the bunny gentleman.