ourtland--2654". There is really nothing left to do but
to call him up. Fortunately the line is busy, which gives you a
perfectly good excuse for putting it over until Tuesday. But on Tuesday
luck is against you and you get a clear connection with the doctor
himself. An appointment is arranged for Thursday afternoon at 3:30.

Thursday afternoon, and here it is only Tuesday morning! Almost anything
may happen between now and then. We might declare war on Mexico, and off
you'd have to go, dentist appointment or no dentist appointment. Surely
a man couldn't let a date to have a tooth filled stand in the way of his
doing his duty to his country. Or the social revolution might start on
Wednesday, and by Thursday the whole town might be in ashes. You can
picture yourself standing, Thursday afternoon at 3.30 on the ruins of
the City Hall, fighting off marauding bands of reds, and saying to
yourself, with a sigh of relief: "Only to think! At this time I was to
have been climbing into the dentist's chair!" You never can tell when
your luck will turn in a thing like that.

But Wednesday goes by and nothing happens. And Thursday morning dawns
without even a word from the dentist saying that he has been called
suddenly out of town to lecture before the Incisor Club. Apparently,
everything is working against you.

By this time, your tongue has taken up a permanent resting-place in the
vacant tooth, and is causing you to talk indistinctly and incoherently.
Somehow you feel that if the dentist opens your mouth and finds the tip
of your tongue in the tooth, he will be deceived and go away without
doing anything.

The only thing left is for you to call him up and say that you have just
killed a man and are being arrested and can't possibly keep your
appointment. But any dentist would see through that. He would laugh
right into his transmitter at you. There is probably no excuse which it
would be possible to invent which a dentist has not already heard eighty
or ninety times. No, you might as well see the thing through now.

Luncheon is a ghastly rite. The whole left side of your jaw has suddenly
developed an acute sensitiveness and the disaffection has spread to the
four teeth on either side of the original one. You doubt if it will be
possible for him to touch it at all. Perhaps all he intends to do this
time is to look at it anyway. You might even suggest that to him. You
could very easily come in again soon and have him do the ac