o the hall and was leaning over the banisters.

"Oh, Mac!" he called. McTeague came to his door.

"Hullo! 'sthat you, Mark?"

"Sure," answered Marcus. "Come on up."

"You come on down."

"No, come on up."

"Oh, you come on down."

"Oh, you lazy duck!" retorted Marcus, coming down the stairs.

"Been out to the Cliff House on a picnic," he explained as he sat down
on the bed-lounge, "with my uncle and his people--the Sieppes, you know.
By damn! it was hot," he suddenly vociferated. "Just look at that! Just
look at that!" he cried, dragging at his limp collar. "That's the third
one since morning; it is--it is, for a fact--and you got your stove
going." He began to tell about the picnic, talking very loud and fast,
gesturing furiously, very excited over trivial details. Marcus could not
talk without getting excited.

"You ought t'have seen, y'ought t'have seen. I tell you, it was outa
sight. It was; it was, for a fact."

"Yes, yes," answered McTeague, bewildered, trying to follow. "Yes,
that's so."

In recounting a certain dispute with an awkward bicyclist, in which it
appeared he had become involved, Marcus quivered with rage. "'Say that
again,' says I to um. 'Just say that once more, and'"--here a rolling
explosion of oaths--"'you'll go back to the city in the Morgue wagon.
Ain't I got a right to cross a street even, I'd like to know, without
being run down--what?' I say it's outrageous. I'd a knifed him in
another minute. It was an outrage. I say it was an OUTRAGE."

"Sure it was," McTeague hastened to reply. "Sure, sure."

"Oh, and we had an accident," shouted the other, suddenly off on another
tack. "It was awful. Trina was in the swing there--that's my cousin
Trina, you know who I mean--and she fell out. By damn! I thought she'd
killed herself; struck her face on a rock and knocked out a front tooth.
It's a wonder she didn't kill herself. It IS a wonder; it is, for a
fact. Ain't it, now? Huh? Ain't it? Y'ought t'have seen."

McTeague had a vague idea that Marcus Schouler was stuck on his cousin
Trina. They "kept company" a good deal; Marcus took dinner with the
Sieppes every Saturday evening at their home at B Street station, across
the bay, and Sunday afternoons he and the family usually made little
excursions into the suburbs. McTeague began to wonder dimly how it
was that on this occasion Marcus had not gone home with his cousin. As
sometimes happens, Marcus furnished the explanation upon the insta