" Madam
Liberality had seen such a pincushion in Podmore's work-basket. She
had a shell of the kind, and the village carpenter would always let
her put a stick into his glue-pot if she went to the shop.
But then, if emery were only a penny a pound, Madam Liberality had not
a farthing to buy a quarter of a pound with. As she thought of this
her brow contracted, partly with vexation, and partly because of a
jumping pain in a big tooth, which, either from much illness or many
medicines, or both, was now but the wreck of what a tooth should be.
But as the toothache grew worse, a new hope dawned upon Madam
Liberality. Perhaps one of her troubles would mend the other!
Being very tender-hearted over children's sufferings, it was her
mother's custom to bribe rather than coerce when teeth had to be taken
out. The fixed scale of reward was sixpence for a tooth without fangs,
and a shilling for one with them. If pain were any evidence, this
tooth certainly had fangs. But one does not have a tooth taken out if
one can avoid it, and Madam Liberality bore bad nights and painful
days till they could be endured no longer; and then, because she knew
it distressed her mother to be present, she went alone to the doctor's
house to ask him to take out her tooth.
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