stopping materials were anywhere near running short and the gold drawer was filled. She examined the drawers that held the less frequently used fittings and materials, conducting her operations noiselessly without impeding Mr. Hancock's perpetual movements to and fro between the chair and the instrument cabinet. Meanwhile the dressing of Lady Cazalet's painful tooth went quietly on and Mr. Leyton was waiting, hoping for her assistance downstairs. There was no excuse for waiting upstairs any longer. She went to the writing table and hung over the appointment book. 4 It was a busy day. He would hardly have half an hour for lunch.... She examined the names carefully, one by one, and wrote against one "ask address," underlined and against another "enquire for brother--ill." Lady Cazalet drew a deep sigh ... she had been to other dentists. But perhaps they were good ones. Perhaps she was about thirty ... had she ever gone through a green baize door and seen a fat common little man with smooth sly eyes standing waiting for her in a dark stuffy room smelling of creosote? Even if she had always been to good ones they were not Mr. Hancock. They were dentists. Cheerful ordinary men with ordinary voices and laughs, thinking about all manner of things. Or apparently bland, with ingratiating manners. Perhaps a few of them, some of his friends and some of the young men he had trained were something like him. Interested in dentistry and the way it was all developing, some of them more enthusiastic and interested in certain special things than he was. But no one could be quite like him. No other patients had the lot of his patients. No other dentist was so completely conscious of the patient all the time, as if he were in the chair himself. No other dentist went on year after year remaining sensitive to everything the patient had to endure. No one else was so unsparing of himself ... children coming eagerly in for their dentistry, sitting in the chair with slack limbs and wide open mouths and tranquil eyes ... small bodies braced and tense, fat hands splayed out tightly on the too-big arms of the chair in determination to bear the moment of pain bravely for him.... She wandered to the corner cupboard and opened it and gazed idly in. But none of them knew what it cost.... "I think you won't have any more pain with that; I'll just put in a dressing for the present"--she was Lady Cazalet again, without tooth-ache, and that awful feeling that you know your body won't last ... they did not know what it cost. What always doing the best for the patient _meant_. Perhaps they knew in a way; or knew something and did not know what it was ... there would be something different in Mr. Hancock's expression, especially in the three quarters view when his face was turned away towards the instrument cabinet, if he saved his nerves and energy and money by doing things less considerately, not perpetually having the instruments sharpened and