She took her place in the operating chair and told him what was the
matter, looking squarely into his face. She had fallen out of a swing
the afternoon of the preceding day; one of her teeth had been knocked
loose and the other altogether broken out.

McTeague listened to her with apparent stolidity, nodding his head from
time to time as she spoke. The keenness of his dislike of her as a woman
began to be blunted. He thought she was rather pretty, that he even
liked her because she was so small, so prettily made, so good natured
and straightforward.

"Let's have a look at your teeth," he said, picking up his mirror. "You
better take your hat off." She leaned back in her chair and opened her
mouth, showing the rows of little round teeth, as white and even as the
kernels on an ear of green corn, except where an ugly gap came at the
side.

McTeague put the mirror into her mouth, touching one and another of her
teeth with the handle of an excavator. By and by he straightened up,
wiping the moisture from the mirror on his coat-sleeve.

"Well, Doctor," said the girl, anxiously, "it's a dreadful
disfigurement, isn't it?" adding, "What can you do about it?"

"Well," answered McTeague, slowly, looking vaguely about on the floor of
the room, "the roots of the broken tooth are still in the gum; they'll
have to come out, and I guess I'll have to pull that other bicuspid. Let
me look again. Yes," he went on in a moment, peering into her mouth
with the mirror, "I guess that'll have to come out, too." The tooth was