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." "Yet I like him," said Jean. "So do I. So does everybody. And he's getting rich on the strength of it." "I'm getting rich on the strength of it, too," Jean laughed. "Next week I shall really be able to put money in the bank." Better paid, better dressed, with easy work and not infrequent leisure to read, she felt that at last she had begun to live. Her position long retained a flavor of novelty, for the dental company's patrons were infinitely various and furnished endless topics of interest to herself and Paul. They usually went to and from Mrs. St. Aubyn's together, and as the summer excursion season drew on, their Sunday pleasurings began to flourish afresh. Sometimes Amy joined them, but more often she made labored excuses, and they went alone. Jean thought her more secretive and reserved than of old, and Paul, too, remarked a change. "How did you two get chummy?" he asked abruptly, after one of Amy's declinations. "You're not at all alike." "Chums are usually different, aren't they?" Jean said, her skin beginning to prickle. "Not so much as you two. You're a lady and she--well, she isn't. Known her some time?" "Yes." "Where did you meet? You were certainly green to the city when you struck our house. Amy's an East Sider Simon-pure." "It was in the country. Amy stayed in the country once." "Shawnee Springs?" "No, no. Another place." "Was that where you knew Miss Archer?"