"Just see how you are rumpling that cloak! What do you mean?" "I'm not hurting the cloak, mother," answered Phoebe, coolly. Then, with a shade of reproof, she added, "You fret yourself for nothing." "Do you call it nothing to abuse an elegant garment like that?" demanded Mrs. Caldwell. "To throw it upon the floor, and tumble it about as if it were an old rag?" "All of which, mother mine, I have not done." And the girl tossed her head with an air of light indifference. "Don't talk to me in that way, Phoebe! I'll not suffer it. You are forgetting yourself." The mother spoke with a sternness of manner that caused her daughter to remain silent. As they stood looking at each other, Mrs. Caldwell said, in a changed voice,-- "What is that on your front tooth?" "A speck of something, I don't know what; I noticed it only yesterday." Mrs. Caldwell crossed the room hastily, with a disturbed manner, and catching hold of Phoebe's arm, drew her to a window. "Let me see!" and she looked narrowly at the tooth, "Decay, as I live!" The last sentence was uttered in a tone of alarm. "You must go to the dentist immediately. This is dreadful! If your teeth are beginning to fail now, you'll not have one left in your head by the time you're twenty-five." "It's only a speck," said Phoebe, evincing little concern. "A speck! I And do you know what a speck means?" demanded Mrs. Caldwell, with no chance in the troubled expression of her face. "What does it mean?" asked Phoebe. "Why, it means that the quality of your teeth is not good. One speck is only the herald of another. Next week a second tooth may show signs of decay, and a third in the week afterwards. Dear--dear! This is too bad! The fact is, you are destroying your health. I've talked and talked about the way you devour candies and sweetmeats; about the way you sit up at night, and about a hundred other irregularities. There must be a change in all. This, Phoebe, as I've told you dozens and dozens of times." Mrs. Caldwell was growing more and more excited. "Mother! mother!" replied Phoebe, "don't fret yourself for nothing. The speck can be removed in an instant." "But the enamel is destroyed! Don't you see that? Decay will go on." "I don't believe that follows at all," answered Phoebe, tossing her head, indifferently, "And even if I believed in the worst, I'd find more comfort in laughing than crying." And she ran off to her own room. Poor Mrs. Caldwell sat down to brood over this new trouble; and as she brooded, fancy wrought for her the most unpleasing images. She saw the beauty of Phoebe, a few years later in life, most sadly marred by broken or discolored teeth. Looking at that, and that alone, it magnified itself into a calamity, grew to an evil which overshadowed everything.