imagine
that the first was a client, but then the aspect of Mr Rannoch's mouth,
had it caught the eye of the second, was not reassuring. However, Mr
Rannoch's mouth happily did not catch the eye of the second.

The second was a visitor beyond Mr Cowlishaw's hopes, no other than Mrs
Simeon Clowes, landlady of the Turk's Head and Mayoress of Hanbridge; a
tall and well-built, handsome, downright woman, of something more than
fifty and something less than sixty; the mother of five married
daughters, the aunt of fourteen nephews and nieces, the grandam of
seven, or it might be eight, assorted babies; in short, a lady of vast
influence. After all, then, she had come to him! If only he could please
her, he regarded his succession to his predecessor as definitely
established and his fortune made. No person in Hanbridge with any
yearnings for style would dream, he trusted, of going to any other
dentist than the dentist patronized by Mrs Clowes.

She eyed him interrogatively and firmly. She probed into his character,
and he felt himself pierced.

"You _are_ Mr Cowlishaw?" she began.

"Good afternoon, Mrs Clowes," he replied. "Yes, I am. Can I be of
service to you?"

"That depends," she said.

He asked her to step in, and in she stepped.

"Have you had any experience in taking teeth out?" she asked in the
surgery. Her hand stroked her left cheek.

"Oh yes," he said eagerly. "But, of course, we try to avoid extraction
as much as possible."

"If you're going to talk like that," she said coldly, and even bitterly,
"I'd better go."

He wondered what she was driving at.

"Naturally," he said, summoning all his latent powers of diplomacy,
"there are cases in which extraction is unfortunately necessary."

"How many teeth have you extracted?" she inquired.

"I really couldn't say," he lied. "Very many."

"Because," she said, "you don't look as if you could say 'Bo!' to a
goose."

He observed a gleam in her eye.

"I think I can say 'Bo!' to a goose," he said. She laughed.

"Don't fancy, Mr Cowlishaw, that if I laugh I'm not in the most horrible
pain. I am. When I tell you I couldn't go with Mr Clowes to the match--"

"Will you take this seat?" he said, indicating the chair of chairs;
"then I can examine."

She obeyed. "I do hate the horrid, velvety feeling of these chairs," she
said; "it's most creepy."

"I shall have to trouble you to take your bonnet off."

So she removed her bonnet, and he took it as he might