"O, yeez needn't be afeared of that--I'm howldin' yeez tight as a divil!" cries Paddy, and sure enough he _was_ holding, for in vain Bill screwed and twisted and squirmed around; Pat held him like a cider-press. "Let me--me--O--O--O! Everlasting creation! let me go-o-o--stop, _hold on-n-n!_" as the Doctor bored, screwed, and plugged away at the tooth. "All done, sir; let the patient up, Michael," says the Doctor, with a confident twirl of his perfumed handkerchief. "There, sir--there was science, art, elegance, and dispatch! Now, sir, your tooth is safe--your life is safe--_you're a sound man!_" "Sound?" echoes poor Bill, "sound? Why, you've broken my jaw into flinders; you've set all my teeth on edge; and I've no more feelin'--gall darn ye!--in my jaws, than if they were iron steel-traps! You've got the wuth of your money out of my mouth, and I'm off!" That night was one of anxiety and misery to William Whiffletree. The disturbed _molar_ growled and twitched like mad; and, by daylight, poor Bill's cheek was swollen up equal to a printer's buff-ball, his mouth puckered, and his right eye half "bunged up." "Why, William," says Ethan Rakestraw, as Bill went into the store, "what in grace ails thy face? Thee looks like an owl in an ivy-bush!" "Been plugged and filed," says Bill, looking cross as a meat-axe at his snickering Orthodox boss. "Plugged and _fined_? Thee hain't been fighting, William?" "Fined? No, I ain't been _fined_ or fighting, Mr. Rakestraw, but I bet I do fight that feller who gave me the tooth-ache!--O! O!" moaned poor Bill, as he clamped his swollen jaw with his hand, and went around waving his head like a plaster-of-paris mandarin. "O! thee's been to the dentist, eh? Got the tooth-ache? Go thee to my wife; she'll cure thee in one minute, William; a little laudanum and cotton will soon ease thy pain." Mrs. Rakestraw applied the laudanum to Bill's molar, but as it did no kind of good, old grandmother proposed a poultice; and soon poor Bill's head and cheek were done up in mush, while he groaned and grunted and started for the store, every body gaping at his swollen countenance as though he was a rare curiosity. "Halloo, Bill!" says old Firelock, the gunsmith, as Bill was going by his shop; "got a bag in your calabash, or got the tooth-ache?" Bill looked daggers at old Firelock, and by a nod of his head intimated the cause of his distress. "O, that all? Come in; I'll stop it in a minute and a half; sit down, I'll fix it--I've cured hundreds," says Firelock. "What are you--O-h-h, dear! what are you going to do?" says Bill, eyeing the wire, and lamp in which Firelock was heating the wire. "Burn out the marrow of the tooth--'twill never trouble you again--I've cured hundreds that way! Don't be afeared--you won't feel it but a moment. Sit still, keep cool!" says Firelock.