Then at last came the sale.  McTeague and Trina, whom Miss Baker had invited to her room for that day, sat there side by side, holding each other’s hands, listening nervously to the turmoil that rose to them from the direction of their suite.  From nine o’clock till dark the crowds came and went.  All Polk Street seemed to have invaded the suite, lured on by the red flag that waved from the front windows.  It was a fete, a veritable holiday, for the whole neighborhood.  People with no thought of buying presented themselves.  Young women—­the candy-store girls and florist’s apprentices—­came to see the fun, walking arm in arm from room to room, making jokes about the pretty lithographs and mimicking the picture of the two little girls saying their prayers.

“Look here,” they would cry, “look here what she used for curtains—­Nottingham lace, actually!  Whoever thinks of buying Nottingham lace now-a-days?  Say, don’t that Jar you?”

“And a melodeon,” another one would exclaim, lifting the sheet.  “A melodeon, when you can rent a piano for a dollar a week; and say, I really believe they used to eat in the kitchen.”

“Dollarn-half, dollarn-half, dollarn-half, give me two,” intoned the auctioneer from the second-hand store.  By noon the crowd became a jam.  Wagons backed up to the curb outside and departed heavily laden.  In all directions people could be seen going away from the house, carrying small articles of furniture—­a clock, a water pitcher, a towel rack.  Every now and then old Miss Baker, who had gone below to see how things were progressing, returned with reports of the foray.

“Mrs. Heise bought the chenille portieres.  Mister Ryer made a bid for your bed, but a man in a gray coat bid over him.  It was knocked down for three dollars and a half.  The German shoe-maker on the next block bought the stone pug dog.  I saw our postman going away with a lot of the pictures.  Zerkow has come, on my word! the rags-bottles-sacks man; he’s buying lots; he bought all Doctor McTeague’s gold tape and some of the instruments.  Maria’s there too.  That dentist on the corner took the dental engine, and wanted to get the sign, the big gold tooth,” and so on and so on.  Cruelest of all, however, at least to Trina, was when Miss Baker herself began to buy, unable to resist a bargain.  The last time she came up she carried a bundle of the gay tidies that used to hang over the chair backs.

“He offered them, three for a nickel,” she explained to Trina, “and I thought I’d spend just a quarter.  You don’t mind, now, do you, Mrs. McTeague?”

“Why, no, of course not, Miss Baker,” answered Trina, bravely.

“They’ll look very pretty on some of my chairs,” went on the little old dressmaker, innocently.  “See.”  She spread one of them on a chair back for inspection.  Trina’s chin quivered.

“Oh, very pretty,” she answered.

At length that dreadful day was over.  The crowd dispersed.  Even the auctioneer went at last, and as he closed the door with a bang, the reverberation that went through the suite gave evidence of its emptiness.