"I know what pity looks like, and I know the other thing. She's no soft-heart to squinch at the sight of blood, and that sort of foolery. Tell ye, she was jest as quiet and cool as if 'twas a church sociable, and she set that bone as easy and chirk as my woman would take a pie out the oven; but when she had you all piecened up, and stood and looked at you—wal, there!"
"Don't! I cannot let you!" cried Geoffrey. His voice was full of distress; but was it the western sun that made his face so bright?
"Wal, there's all kinds of fools," said Mr. Butters. "Got the teethache?"
"Toothache? no! why?"
"Thought you hollered as if ye had. How would you go to work to cure the teethache now, s'posin' you had it?"
"I should go to a dentist, and let him cure it for me."
"S'posin' you lived ten mile from a dentist, young feller? you're too used to settin' in the middle of creation and jerkin' the reins for the hoss to go. Jonas E. Homer had the teethache once, bad."
He paused.
"Well," said the young doctor, "who was Jonas E. Homer, and how did he cure his toothache?"
"Jonas Elimelech was his full name," said Mr. Butters, settling himself comfortably in his chair. "He's neighbour to me, about five miles out on the Buffy Landin' ro'd. Yes, he had the teethache bad. Wife wanted him to go and have 'em hauled, but he said he wouldn't have no feller goin' fishin' in his mouth. No, sir! he went and he bored a hole in the northeast side of a beech-tree, and put in a hair of a yaller dawg, and then plugged up the hole with a pine plug. That was ten years ago, and he's never had the teethache sence. He told me that himself."