et. 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.

The doctor was a very kind old man, and he did his best, so we will
not say anything about his antique instruments, or the number of times
he tied a pocket-handkerchief round an awful-looking claw, and put
both into Madam Liberality's mouth without effect.

At last he said he had got the tooth out, and he wrapped it in paper,
and gave it to Madam Liberality, who, having thought that it was her
head he had extracted from its socket, was relieved to get away.

As she ran home she began to plan how to lay out her shilling for the
best, and when she was nearly there she opened the bit of paper to
look at her enemy, and it had no fangs!

"I'm _sure_ it was more than a sixpenny one," she sobbed; "I believe
he has left them in."

It involved more than the loss of half the funds she had reckoned
upon. Perhaps this dreadful pain would go on even on Christmas Day.
Her first thought was to carry her tears to her mother; her second
that, if she only could be brave enough to have the fangs taken out,
she might spare mother all distress about it till it was over, when
she would certainly like her sufferings to be known and sympathized
with. She knew well that courage does not come with waiting, and
making a desperate rally of stout-heartedness, she ran