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"Ah, get up and say somethun, anyhow," persisted Marcus; "you ought to do it. It's the proper caper." McTeague heaved himself up; there was a burst of applause; he looked slowly about him, then suddenly sat down again, shaking his head hopelessly. "Oh, go on, Mac," cried Trina. "Get up, say somethun, anyhow," cried Marcus, tugging at his arm; "you GOT to." Once more McTeague rose to his feet.
And she told me, too," Trina went on indignantly, "that she knew the owner, and she was sure we could get the house for thirty if we'd bargain for it. Now what have you gone and done? I hadn't made up my mind about taking the house at all. And now I WON'T take it, with the water in the basement and all." "Well well," stammered McTeague, helplessly, "we needn't go in if it's unhealthy."
"You don't dare follow me now," he muttered, as he hurried on. "Let's see you come out HERE after me." He hurried on swiftly, urging the mule to a rapid racking walk. Towards four o'clock the sky in front of him began to flush pink and golden. McTeague halted and breakfasted, pushing on again immediately afterward.
McTeague could not hear the talk that followed between him and the harnessmaker, but it seemed to him that Marcus was telling Heise of some injury, some grievance, and that the latter was trying to pacify him. All at once their talk grew louder.
The acquaintance had begun at the car conductors' coffee-joint, where the two occupied the same table and met at every meal. Then they made the discovery that they both lived in the same flat, Marcus occupying a room on the floor above McTeague. On different occasions McTeague had treated Marcus for an ulcerated tooth and had refused to accept payment.
He woke slowly, finished the rest of his beer very flat and stale by this time and taking down his concertina from the bookcase, where in week days it kept the company of seven volumes of "Allen's Practical Dentist," played upon it some half-dozen very mournful airs. McTeague looked forward to these Sunday afternoons as a period of relaxation and enjoyment.
Heise started back from the sudden apparition of a white-lipped woman in a blue dressing-gown that seemed to rise up before him from his very doorstep. "Well, Mrs. McTeague, you did scare me, for " "Oh, come over here quick." Trina put her hand to her neck; swallowing something that seemed to be choking her. "Maria's killed Zerkow's wife I found her." "Get out!" exclaimed Heise, "you're joking."
McTeague remembered now that it was what is called a "proximate case," where there is not sufficient room to fill with large pieces of gold. He told himself that he should have to use "mats" in the filling. He made some dozen of these "mats" from his tape of non-cohesive gold, cutting it transversely into small pieces that could be inserted edgewise between the teeth and consolidated by packing.
McTeague might cease to love her, might leave her, might even die; it would be all the same, SHE WAS HIS. But it had not been so at first.
Heise laid a retaining hand upon his companion's coat sleeve, but Marcus swung himself around in his chair, and, fixing his eyes on McTeague, cried as if in answer to some protestation on the part of Heise: "All I know is that I've been soldiered out of five thousand dollars." McTeague gaped at him, bewildered.
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