“Oh confound.” He rang again hurriedly. “Show up Lady Cazalet.” Miriam swept from the bracket table the litter of used instruments and materials, disposing them rapidly on the cabinet, into the sterilising tray, the waste basket and the wash-hand basin, tore the uppermost leaf from the headrest pad, and detached the handpiece from the arm of the motor drill while the patient was being shown upstairs. Mr. Hancock had cleared the spittoon, set a fresh tumbler, filled the kettle and whisked the debris of amalgam and cement from the bracket table before he began the scrubbing and cleansing of his hands, and when the patient came in Miriam was in her corner reluctantly handling the instruments, wet with the solution that crinkled her fingertips and made her skin brittle and dry. Everything was in its worst state. The business of drying and cleansing, freeing fine points from minute closely adhering fragments, polishing instruments on the leather pad, repolishing them with the leather, scraping the many little burs with the fine wire brush, scraping the clamps, clearing the obstinate amalgam from slab and spatula, brought across her the ever-recurring circle. The things were begun, they were getting on, she had half-done … the exasperating tediousness of holding herself to the long series of tiny careful attention-demanding movements … the punctual emergence when the end was in sight of the hovering reflection, nagging and questioning, that another set of things was already getting ready for another cleansing process; the endless series to last as long as she stayed at Wimpole Street … were there any sort of people who could do this kind of thing patiently, without minding? … the evolution of dentistry was wonderful, but the more perfect it became the more and more of this sort of thing there would be … the more drudgery workers, at fixed salaries … it was only possible for people who were fine and nice … there must be, everywhere, women doing this work for people who were not nice. They could not do it for the work’s sake. Did some of them do it cheerfully, as unto God. It was wrong to work unto man. But could God approve of this kind of thing … was it right to spend life cleaning instruments … the blank moment again of gazing about in vain for an alternative … all work has drudgery. That is not the answer. … Blessèd be Drudgery, but that was housekeeping, not someone else’s drudgery. … As she put the things back in the drawers, every drawer offered tasks of tidying, replenishing, and repapering of small boxes and grooves and sections. She had remembered to bring up Lady Cazalet’s chart. It looked at her propped against the small furnace. Behind it were the other charts for the day complete. The drug bottles were full, there was plenty of amadou pulled soft and cut ready for use, a fair supply of both kinds of Japanese paper. None of the bottles and boxes of stopping materials were anywhere near running short and the gold drawer was filled. She examined the drawers that held the less frequently used fittings and materials, conducting her operations noiselessly without impeding Mr. Hancock’s perpetual movements to and fro between the chair and the instrument cabinet. Meanwhile the dressing of Lady Cazalet’s painful tooth went quietly on and Mr. Leyton was waiting, hoping for her assistance downstairs. There was no excuse for waiting upstairs any longer. She went to the writing table and hung over the appointment book.
It was a busy day. He would hardly have half an hour for lunch. … She examined the names carefully, one by one, and wrote against one “ask address,” underlined and against another “enquire for brother—ill.” Lady Cazalet drew a deep sigh … she had been to other dentists. But perhaps they were good ones. Perhaps she was about thirty … had she ever gone through
