“The ’pothecaries used to draw teeth in my day; now they must be all gentlefolks as looks into your mouth,” said the old woman, who had been three minutes searching in her pocket for the snuff-box that lay open, with some of its sand-coloured contents spilt, in her lap. “Pretty gentlefolks!” exclaimed Mrs. Parrot, pulling up the old woman’s dress and tilting the spilt snuff into the box. “If they’re all like Mr. Conway, I’d rather carry a toothache to my grave than have it stopped wi’ the lockjaw, which they tell me he gave to Mr. Timpson; for drink had taken away the use of his mind, and he pushed the wrong instrayment into the man’s mouth and nearly choked him, he did, and then took out two wrong teeth after all; beautiful teeth they was, for Mr. Timpson showed them to me hisself, with the tears standin’ in his eyes, wropped up in silver paper.” “Thank God! he can’t draw none o’ my teeth!” mumbled the old woman, talking through her nose in rapt enjoyment of the flavour of the snuff. “They’re all gone.” “I noticed Mrs. Conway’s gownd to-day. If I was her husband, I’d scorn to let her appear in sitch a rag. And there was darns in the knees o’ that child’s stockings as made ’em look forty year old. They’re always i’ the same dresses, both of ’em. There’s a silk she puts on o’ Sundays, all wore thin over the buzzum, and I remember the bonnet she had on to-day iver since I’ve known her. Sitch a pretty face as she has, too! I expect he must ha’ told her some fine lies to get her to marry him. They say he niver did well, even when he was in the High Street, wi’ that show-box of his stuck up, filled wi’ gaping gums an’ naked teeth as turned the stomach to see. He must ha’ sold that piece of ugliness, for I don’t see it nowheres outside his house, which is a mussy, for I’d as lief see a skiliton on a pole for a sign! Fancy a doctor settin’ up a death’s-head to show his trade!” She jumped from her chair with a face and gesture of disgust, and throwing some knitting with the pins through it into her mother’s lap, adjusted her cap before the glass, and left the room. * * * * * There is always some truth in gossip: and there was a great deal in what Mrs. Parrot had said of Mr. Conway, who, as we have seen, held no place at all in her opinion. But then sympathy for Dolly was to be expected from a woman who, if she did not know what it was to live with a drunkard, had known what it was to live with a surly man, whose eye was evil, and whose voice was thick, and whose characteristic method of expressing discontent was by holding his clenched fist under his wife’s nose.