The next two months were delightful. Trina and
McTeague saw each other regularly, three times a week.
The dentist went over to B Street Sunday and Wednesday
afternoons as usual; but on Fridays it was Trina who
came to the city. She spent the morning between
nine and twelve o’clock down town, for the most
part in the cheap department stores, doing the weekly
shopping for herself and the family. At noon she
took an uptown car and met McTeague at the corner
of Polk Street. The two lunched together at a
small uptown hotel just around the corner on Sutter
Street. They were given a little room to themselves.
Nothing could have been more delicious. They
had but to close the sliding door to shut themselves
off from the whole world.
Trina would arrive breathless from her raids upon
the bargain counters, her pale cheeks flushed, her
hair blown about her face and into the corners of
her lips, her mother’s net reticule stuffed to
bursting. Once in their tiny private room, she
would drop into her chair with a little groan.
“Oh, Mac, I am so tired; I’ve just
been all over town. Oh, it’s good to
sit down. Just think, I had to stand up in the
car all the way, after being on my feet the whole
blessed morning. Look here what I’ve bought.
Just things and things. Look, there’s some
dotted veiling I got for myself; see now, do you think
it looks pretty?”—she spread it over
her face—“and I got a box of writing
paper, and a roll of crepe paper to make a lamp shade
for the front parlor; and—what do you suppose—I
saw a pair of Nottingham lace curtains for forty-nine
cents; isn’t that cheap? and some chenille
portieres for two and a half. Now what have you
been doing since I last saw you? Did Mr. Heise
finally get up enough courage to have his tooth pulled
yet?” Trina took off her hat and veil and rearranged
her hair before the looking-glass.
“No, no—not yet. I went down
to the sign painter’s yesterday afternoon to
see about that big gold tooth for a sign. It costs
too much; I can’t get it yet a while. There’s
two kinds, one German gilt and the other French gilt;
but the German gilt is no good.”
McTeague sighed, and wagged his head. Even Trina
and the five thousand dollars could not make him forget
this one unsatisfied longing.
At other times they would talk at length over their
plans, while Trina sipped her chocolate and McTeague
devoured huge chunks of butterless bread. They
were to be married at the end of May, and the dentist
already had his eye on a couple of rooms, part of the
suite of a bankrupt photographer. They were situated
in the flat, just back of his “Parlors,”
and he believed the photographer would sublet them
furnished.
