McTeague, have you got any tea? Let's make a cup of tea over the stove."
"No, no," cried Trina, with niggardly apprehension; "no, I haven't got a bit of tea." Trina's stinginess had increased to such an extent that it had gone beyond the mere hoarding of money. She grudged even the food that she and McTeague ate, and even brought away half loaves of bread, lumps of sugar, and fruit from the car conductors' coffee-joint. She hid these pilferings away on the shelf by the window, and often managed to make a very creditable lunch from them, enjoying the meal with the greater relish because it cost her nothing.
"No, Maria, I haven't got a bit of tea," she said, shaking her head decisively. "Hark, ain't that Mac?" she added, her chin in the air. "That's his step, sure."
"Well, I'm going to skip," said Maria. She left hurriedly, passing the dentist in the hall just outside the door.
"Well?" said Trina interrogatively as her husband entered.
McTeague did not answer. He hung his hat on the hook behind the door and dropped heavily into a chair.
"Well," asked Trina, anxiously, "how did you make out, Mac?"
Still the dentist pretended not to hear, scowling fiercely at his muddy boots.
"Tell me, Mac, I want to know. Did you get a place? Did you get caught in the rain?"
"Did I? Did I?" cried the dentist, sharply, an alacrity in his manner and voice that Trina had never observed before.
"Look at me. Look at me," he went on, speaking with an unwonted rapidity, his wits sharp, his ideas succeeding each other quickly. "Look at me, drenched through, shivering cold. I've walked the city over. Caught in the rain! Yes, I guess I did get caught in the rain, and it ain't your fault I didn't catch my death-a-cold; wouldn't even let me have a nickel for car fare."
"But, Mac," protested Trina, "I didn't know it was going to rain."
The dentist put back his head and laughed scornfully. His face was very red, and his small eyes twinkled. "Hoh! no, you didn't know it was going to rain. Didn't I TELL you it was?" he exclaimed, suddenly angry again. "Oh, you're a DAISY, you are. Think I'm going to put up with your foolishness ALL the time? Who's the boss, you or I?"
"Why, Mac, I never saw you this way before. You talk like a different man."
"Well, I AM a different man," retorted the dentist, savagely. "You can't make small of me ALWAYS."
"Well, never mind that. You know I'm not trying to make small of you. But never mind that. Did you get a place?"
"Give me my money," exclaimed McTeague, jumping up briskly.
There was an activity, a positive nimbleness about the huge blond giant that had never been his before; also his stupidity, the sluggishness of his brain, seemed to be unusually stimulated.
"Give me my money, the money I gave you as I was going away."
"I can't," exclaimed Trina. "I paid the grocer's bill with it while you were gone."
"Don't believe you."
"Truly, truly, Mac. Do you think I'd lie to you? Do you think I'd lower myself to do that?"
"Well, the next time I earn any money I'll keep it myself."
"But tell me, Mac, DID you get a place?"
McTeague turned his back on her.
"Tell me, Mac, please, did you?"
The dentist jumped up and thrust his face close to hers, his heavy jaw protruding, his little eyes twinkling meanly.
"No," he shouted. "No, no, NO. Do you hear? NO."
Trina cowered before him. Then suddenly she began to sob aloud, weeping partly at his strange brutality, partly at the disappointment of his failure to find employment.
McTeague cast a contemptuous glance about him, a glance that embraced the dingy, cheerless room, the rain streaming down the panes of the one window, and the figure of his weeping wife.
"Oh, ain't this all FINE?" he exclaimed. "Ain't it lovely?"
"It's not my fault," sobbed Trina.
"It is too," vociferated McTeague. "It is too. We could live like Christians and decent people if you wanted to.
You got more'n five thousand dollars, and you're so damned stingy that you'd rather live in a rat hole--and make me live there too--before you'd part with a nickel of it. I tell you I'm sick and tired of the whole business."
An allusion to her lottery money never failed to rouse Trina.
