In her dark hour came Paul.
"I know," he said, hunting her out in the corner of the melancholy
drawing-room where she sat Sunday afternoon with absent eyes upon
"The Trial of Effie Deans." "Some of it I guessed, and a little more
filtered from Amy _via_ Mrs. St. Aubyn, but I got the finishing touch
from a man in the store."
"The store!" Jean had a moment of acute dismay; she would fain leave
Paul his illusions. "What man?"
"A chap in the drug department I do work for now and then. He turned up
at the parlors this morning. We're open Sundays from 'leven to one, you
know."
Then, the refuge spectre had followed here! She could not look him in
the face. But Paul's next words reassured.
"He didn't mention names, but I put two and two together quick enough
when he told me that one of their new girls knocked out a fresh
floor-walker the other night. I was proud I knew you."
"Did he know of my--my discharge?"
"No."
"You didn't mention it yourself?" Jean faltered. "Or my name?"
Paul's look was sad.
"That's a shade lower down than I think I've got," he observed loftily.
"A man who'd lug in a lady friend's name under such circumstances
wouldn't stop at the few trifles that still faze me. He--why, he'd even
gold-crown an anterior tooth!"
She hastened to mollify him, relieved beyond measure that his chance
informant knew nothing of the real reason for her dismissal. Amy could
be trusted to conceal it for her own sake. Then Paul stirred her
anxiety afresh with a request.
"I want to polish off Mr. Rose," he said, doubling his fist
suggestively. "You made a good beginning, but the pup needs a thorough
job. I know where he boards--he told me that night he butted in; and if
you'll just let me call round as a friend of yours--"
"No, no. Promise me you won't!"
"But he needs it," argued the dentist, plaintively. "I'd also like, if
it could be managed, to say a few things to the head of the firm."
"Indeed you mustn't," cried Jean. "Promise me you'll say nothing about
it in any way!"
"Can't I even _tell_ Rose what I think?"
"Never. I've got to accept this thing and make a new start. I must
forget it, not brood over it. You mustn't thrash him, you mustn't tell
him what you think--above all, you mustn't go to the firm. Promise me
you won't!"
"All right," he assented, manifestly puzzled. "A girl looks at things
differently. I've got another proposition, though, which I hope you
won't veto. Any prejudice against dentists, present company excepted?"
"No," smiled Jean.
"Some folks have, you know. Can't understand it myself. Why isn't it
as high-toned to doctor teeth as it is to specialize an inch higher
up, say, on the nose? Yet socially the nose-specialist gets the glad
hand in places where the dentist couldn't break in with a Krupp gun. It
makes me hot. But enough said along that line just now. What I started
in to tell you is that there's an opening at the parlors."
"For me--a girl?"
"For a girl?" Paul pretended to weigh this handicap gravely. "Of
course, a lady assistant is generally a man, but still--"
Jean was unfamiliar with this adjunct of modern dentistry.
"What must she do?" she asked.
"Be a lady and assist. That sums it all up. Some old fogies would
specify thirty summers and a homely face, but I believe in a cheery
office straight through. We've been looking round for the right party
lately--the girl who has the berth now is going to be married; but it
never occurred to me to offer it to you until to-day. It would mean
eight dollars a week right at the start, and a raise just as soon as
they appreciate what an air you give the whole place. There'd be more
still in it if you liked the work well enough to branch out."
"Branch out? In what way?"
"Operating-room. At first you'll act as secretary and cashier, receive
patients, and see that the hulk of a janitor keeps the parlors neat.
Then, if you get on as I think you will, you'll very likely have an
assistant yourself, and put in most of your time elsewhere. A clever
girl can be no end of help in the operating-room. Say, for instance,
I'm doing a contour filling, which, let me tell you, needs an eagle-eye
and the patience of a mule. Well, while I pack and figure how to do an
artistic job, you anneal gold and pass it to me in the cavity. See what
I mean? One bright little woman we had for a while drew thirty-five a
week, but she was a trained nurse, too."
Jean had doubts of her usefulness amid these technicalities, but the
office work sounded simple, and she caught thankfully at the chance.
The dentist waved aside her gratitude.
"I'm simply doing a good stroke of business for the Acme Painless
Dental Company," he said. "I'll tell Grimes in the morning that I've
located the right party,--Grimes is the company, by the way, the whole
painless ranch,--and you can drop in later and cinch the deal."
Jean's thoughts took a leap ahead to ways and means, and she drew a
worn shoe farther beneath her skirt.
"You're sure I'll do?" she hesitated.
"You! I only wish you could see some of the procession who've answered
our ad." Then, almost as if he read her mind, he added with unwonted
bashfulness: "If I were in your place, I'd borrow Amy's black feather
boa for your first call. It suits you right down to the ground."
She took the hint laughingly. There were more things than the boa to
be borrowed for the conquest of Grimes. She was touched by Paul's
transparent diplomacy, and glad that in his slow man's way he had at
last perceived why their outings had ceased. So, by grace of Paul and
Amy, it fell out before another week elapsed that the affianced lady
assistant of the Acme Painless Dental Company left to prepare for her
bridal, and Jean reigned in her stead.
The company's outworks on Sixth Avenue were a resplendent negro and
a monumental show-case, both filled with glittering specimens of the
painless marvels accomplished within. The African wore a uniform of
green and gold, and all day forced advertisements into the unwilling
hands of passers-by, chanting meanwhile the full style and title of
the establishment in a voice which soared easily above the roar of
the elevated trains overhead. Passing this personage, you mounted
a staircase whose every step besought you to remember the precise
whereabouts of the parlors, while yet other placards of like import
made clear the way at the top and throughout the unmistakable corridor
leading to the true and only Acme Painless Dental Company's door.
Entering here to the trill of an electric bell, you came full upon
the central office, or, as the leaflets read, the elegant parlor,
from which the operating-rooms led on every hand. In character
this apartment was broadly eclectic. Jean's special nook, with its
telephone, cash-register, and smart roll-top desk, was contemporary to
the minute; yet in the corner diagonally opposed, a suit of stage armor
jauntily bade the waiting patient think upon knights, jousts, and the
swashbuckling Middle Ages. In still another quarter a languorous slave
girl of scanty raiment, but abundant bangles, postured upon a teak-wood
tabouret, backed by way of further realism with Bagdad hangings and a
palm of the convenient species which no frost blights and an occasional
whisk of the duster always rejuvenates. The chairs were frankly Grand
Rapids and built for wear, though the proprietor's avowed taste ran
to a style he called "Lewis Quince"; and the gilt he might not employ
here he lavished upon the frames of his pictures, which, nearly without
exception, were night-scenes wherein shimmering castle windows or the
gibbous moon were cunningly inlaid in mother-of-pearl. In the midst
of all this, now pacifying the waiting with vain promises of speedy
relief, now pottering off into this room or that in as futile attempts
to make each of several sufferers believe his blundering services
exclusive--big, easy-going, slovenly, yet popular--moved Grimes.
Of the operating-rooms, which by no means approached the splendor of
the parlor, the next best to Grimes's own was Paul Bartlett's, for Paul
was a person of importance here. Of the four assistant dentists, he was
at once the best equipped and the best paid, receiving a commission
over and above his regular thirty-five dollars a week. The more
discriminating of the place's queer constituency coolly passed Grimes
by in Paul's favor, but the elder man was not offended. A month or so
after Jean's coming he even offered his clever helper a partnership,
which Paul unhesitatingly declined. He was ambitious for an office of
his own, when his capital should permit, and he planned it along lines
which would have fatigued his slipshod employer to conceive.
"It's all too beastly bad," he told Jean, in answer to her query why
he did not accept Grimes's offer and insist on reform. "You'd simply
have to burn the shop from laboratory to door-mat. To advertise as he
does is against the code of dental ethics, and his practice ought to
be jumped on by the board of health. Look at this junk!" he added,
shaking an indignant fist under the nose of the slave girl. "Lord
knows how many good dollars it cost, and yet we haven't got more than
one decent set of instruments in the whole shebang. I reach for a
spatula or a plugger that I've laid down two minutes before, and I find
it's been packed off by old Grimes to use on another patient. As for
sterilizing--faugh! You could catch _anything_ here. How he's shaved
through so far without a damage suit euchres me."
"Yet I like him," said Jean.
"So do I. So does everybody. And he's getting rich on the strength of
it."
"I'm getting rich on the strength of it, too," Jean laughed. "Next week
I shall really be able to put money in the bank."
Better paid, better dressed, with easy work and not infrequent leisure
to read, she felt that at last she had begun to live. Her position long
retained a flavor of novelty, for the dental company's patrons were
infinitely various and furnished endless topics of interest to herself
and Paul. They usually went to and from Mrs. St. Aubyn's together, and
as the summer excursion season drew on, their Sunday pleasurings began
to flourish afresh. Sometimes Amy joined them, but more often she made
labored excuses, and they went alone. Jean thought her more secretive
and reserved than of old, and Paul, too, remarked a change.
"How did you two get chummy?" he asked abruptly, after one of Amy's
declinations. "You're not at all alike."
"Chums are usually different, aren't they?" Jean said, her skin
beginning to prickle.
"Not so much as you two. You're a lady and she--well, she isn't. Known
her some time?"
"Yes."
"Where did you meet? You were certainly green to the city when you
struck our house. Amy's an East Sider Simon-pure."
"It was in the country. Amy stayed in the country once."
"Shawnee Springs?"
"No, no. Another place."
"Was that where you knew Miss Archer?"
Jean turned a sick face upon him, but Paul's own countenance was
without guile.
"I've overheard you and Amy mention her once or twice," he explained.
"Yes," she stammered. "We both knew her there."
"Out of breath?" he said, still too observant. "I thought we were
taking our usual gait."
She blamed the heat and led him to speak of other things, but the
day was spoiled. She debated seriously whether it were not wise to
make a clean breast of her refuge history, but Paul's belief in her
unworldliness had its sweetness, and the fit chance to dispel his
illusion somehow had not come when Stella, for weeks almost forgotten,
so involved the coil that frankness was impossible.