Georgina had seen him coming and going about the place every day since
she had been brought to live in this old gray house beside the sea, but
this was the first time he had made any lasting impression upon her
memory. Henceforth, she was to carry with her as long as she should live
the picture of a hale, red-faced old man with a woolen muffler wound
around his lean throat. His knitted "wrist-warmers" slipped down over his
mottled, deeply-veined bands when he stooped to roll the log into the
fire. He let go with a grunt. The next instant a mighty sneeze seized
him, and Georgina, who had been gazing in fascination at the shower of
sparks he was making, saw all of his teeth go flying into the fire. If
his eyes had suddenly dropped from their sockets upon the hearth, or his
ears floated off from the sides of his head, she could not have been more
terrified, for she had not yet learned that one's teeth may be a separate
part of one's anatomy. It was such a terrible thing to see a man go to
pieces in this undreamed-of fashion, that she began to scream and writhe
around in her high-chair until it nearly turned over.

She did upset the silver porringer, and what was left of the bread and
milk splashed out on the floor, barely missing the rug. Mrs. Triplett
sprang to snatch her from the toppling chair, thinking the child was
having a spasm. She did not connect it with old Jeremy's sneeze until she
heard his wrathful gibbering, and turned to see him holding up the teeth,
which he had fished out of the fire with the tongs.

They were an old-fashioned set such as one never sees now. They had been
made in England. They were hinged together like jaws, and Georgina yelled
again as she saw them all blackened and gaping, dangling from the tongs.
It was not the grinning teeth themselves, however, which frightened her.
It was the awful knowledge, vague though it was to her infant mind, that
a human body could fly apart in that way. And Tippy, not understanding