The dentist waved aside her gratitude.
"I'm simply doing a good stroke of business for the Acme Painless Dental Company," he said. "I'll tell Grimes in the morning that I've located the right party,—Grimes is the company, by the way, the whole painless ranch,—and you can drop in later and cinch the deal."
Jean's thoughts took a leap ahead to ways and means, and she drew a worn shoe farther beneath her skirt.
"You're sure I'll do?" she hesitated.
"You! I only wish you could see some of the procession who've answered our ad." Then, almost as if he read her mind, he added with unwonted bashfulness: "If I were in your place, I'd borrow Amy's black feather boa for your first call. It suits you right down to the ground."
She took the hint laughingly. There were more things than the boa to be borrowed for the conquest of Grimes. She was touched by Paul's transparent diplomacy, and glad that in his slow man's way he had at last perceived why their outings had ceased. So, by grace of Paul and Amy, it fell out before another week elapsed that the affianced lady assistant of the Acme Painless Dental Company left to prepare for her bridal, and Jean reigned in her stead.
The company's outworks on Sixth Avenue were a resplendent negro and a monumental show-case, both filled with glittering specimens of the painless marvels accomplished within. The African wore a uniform of green and gold, and all day forced advertisements into the unwilling hands of passers-by, chanting meanwhile the full style and title of the establishment in a voice which soared easily above the roar of the elevated trains overhead. Passing this personage, you mounted a staircase whose every step besought you to remember the precise whereabouts of the parlors, while yet other placards of like import made clear the way at the top and throughout the unmistakable corridor leading to the true and only Acme Painless Dental Company's door.
Entering here to the trill of an electric bell, you came full upon the central office, or, as the leaflets read, the elegant parlor, from which the operating-rooms led on every hand. In character this apartment was broadly eclectic. Jean's special nook, with its telephone, cash-register, and smart roll-top desk, was contemporary to the minute; yet in the corner diagonally opposed, a suit of stage armor jauntily bade the waiting patient think upon knights, jousts, and the swashbuckling Middle Ages. In still another quarter a languorous slave girl of scanty raiment, but abundant bangles, postured upon a teak-wood tabouret, backed by way of further realism with Bagdad hangings and a palm of the convenient species which no frost blights and an occasional whisk of the duster always rejuvenates. The chairs were frankly Grand Rapids and built for wear, though the proprietor's avowed taste ran to a style he called "Lewis Quince"; and the gilt he might not employ here he lavished upon the frames of his pictures, which, nearly without exception, were night-scenes wherein shimmering castle windows or the gibbous moon were cunningly inlaid in mother-of-pearl. In the midst of all this, now pacifying the waiting with vain promises of speedy relief, now pottering off into this room or that in as futile attempts to make each of several sufferers believe his blundering services exclusive—big, easy-going, slovenly, yet popular—moved Grimes.
Of the operating-rooms, which by no means approached the splendor of the parlor, the next best to Grimes's own was Paul Bartlett's, for Paul was a person of importance here. Of the four assistant dentists, he was at once the best equipped and the best paid, receiving a commission over and above his regular thirty-five dollars a week. The more discriminating of the place's queer constituency coolly passed Grimes by in Paul's favor, but the elder man was not offended. A month or so after Jean's coming he even offered his clever helper a partnership, which Paul unhesitatingly declined. He was ambitious for an office of his own, when his capital should permit, and he planned it along lines which would have fatigued his slipshod employer to conceive.
"It's all too beastly bad," he told Jean, in answer to her query why he did not accept Grimes's offer and insist on reform. "You'd simply have to burn the shop from laboratory to door-mat. To advertise as he does is against the code of dental ethics, and his practice ought to be jumped on by the board of health. Look at this junk!" he added, shaking an indignant fist under the nose of the slave girl. "Lord knows how many good dollars it cost, and yet we haven't got more than one decent set of instruments in the whole shebang. I reach for a spatula or a plugger that I've laid down two minutes before, and I find it's been packed off by old Grimes to use on another patient. As for sterilizing—faugh! You could catch anything here. How he's shaved through so far without a damage suit euchres me."