“Don’t talk to me in that way, Phoebe!  I’ll not suffer it.  You are forgetting yourself.”  The mother spoke with a sternness of manner that caused her daughter to remain silent.  As they stood looking at each other, Mrs. Caldwell said, in a changed voice,—­

“What is that on your front tooth?”

“A speck of something, I don’t know what; I noticed it only yesterday.”

Mrs. Caldwell. crossed the room hastily, with a disturbed manner, and catching hold of Phoebe’s arm, drew her to a window.

“Let me see!” and she looked narrowly at the tooth, “Decay, as I live!” The last sentence was uttered in a tone of alarm.  “You must go to the dentist immediately.  This is dreadful!  If your teeth are beginning to fail now, you’ll not have one left in your head by the time you’re twenty-five.”

“It’s only a speck,” said Phoebe, evincing little concern.

“A speck!  I And do you know what a speck means?” demanded Mrs. Caldwell, with no chance in the troubled expression of her face.

“What does it mean?” asked Phoebe.

“Why, it means that the quality of your teeth is not good.  One speck is only the herald of another.  Next week a second tooth may show signs of decay, and a third in the week afterwards.  Dear—­dear!  This is too bad!  The fact is, you are destroying your health.  I’ve talked and talked about the way you devour candies and sweetmeats; about the way you sit up at night, and about a hundred other irregularities.  There must be a change in all.  This, Phoebe, as I’ve told you dozens and dozens of times.”

Mrs. Caldwell was growing more and more excited.

“Mother! mother!” replied Phoebe, “don’t fret yourself for nothing.  The speck can be removed in an instant.”

“But the enamel is destroyed!  Don’t you see that?  Decay will go on.”

“I don’t believe that follows at all,” answered Phoebe, tossing her head, indifferently, “And even if I believed in the worst, I’d find more comfort in laughing than crying.”  And she ran off to her own room.

Poor Mrs. Caldwell sat down to brood over this new trouble; and as she brooded, fancy wrought for her the most unpleasing images.

She saw the beauty of Phoebe, a few years later in life, most sadly marred by broken or discolored teeth.  Looking at that, and that alone, it magnified itself into a calamity, grew to an evil which overshadowed everything.

She was still tormenting herself about the prospect of Phoebe’s loss of teeth, when, in passing through her elegantly-furnished parlors, her eyes fell on a pale acid stain, about the size of a shilling piece, one of the rich figures in the carpet.  The color of this figure was maroon, and the stain, in consequence, distinct; at least, it became very distinct to her eye as they dwelt upon it as if held there by a kind of fascination.

Indeed, for a while, Mrs. Caldwell could see nothing else but this spot on the carpet; no, not even though she turned her eyes in various directions, the retina keeping that image to the exclusion of all others.