h the waist of her gown
when she should have been slicing cold chicken in the kitchen. Mr.
Sieppe packed his frock coat, which he would have to wear at the
wedding, at the very bottom of "Trunk C." The minister, who called to
offer his congratulations and to make arrangements, was mistaken for the
expressman.

McTeague came and went furtively, dizzied and made uneasy by all this
bustle. He got in the way; he trod upon and tore breadths of silk; he
tried to help carry the packing-boxes, and broke the hall gas fixture;
he came in upon Trina and the dress-maker at an ill-timed moment, and
retiring precipitately, overturned the piles of pictures stacked in the
hall.

There was an incessant going and coming at every moment of the day,
a great calling up and down stairs, a shouting from room to room, an
opening and shutting of doors, and an intermittent sound of hammering
from the laundry, where Mr. Sieppe in his shirt sleeves labored among
the packing-boxes. The twins clattered about on the carpetless floors of
the denuded rooms. Owgooste was smacked from hour to hour, and wept upon
the front stairs; the dressmaker called over the banisters for a hot
flatiron; expressmen tramped up and down the stairway. Mrs. Sieppe
stopped in the preparation of the lunches to call "Hoop, Hoop" to the
greyhound, throwing lumps of coal. The dog-wheel creaked, the front door
bell rang, delivery wagons rumbled away, windows rattled--the little
house was in a positive uproar.

Almost every day of the week now Trina was obliged to run over to town
and meet McTeague. No more philandering over their lunch now-a-days. It
was business now. They haunted the house-furnishing floors of the great
department houses, inspecting and pricing ranges, hardware, china,
and the like. They rented the photographer's rooms furnished, and
fortunately only the kitchen and dining-room utensils had to be bought.

The money for this as well as for her trousseau came out of Trina's
five thousand dollars. For it had been finally decided that two hundred
dollars of this amount should be devoted to the establishment of the
new household. Now that Trina had made her great winning, Mr. Sieppe
no longer saw the necessity of dowering her further, especially when he
considered the enormous expense to which he would be put by the voyage
of his own family.

It had been a dreadful wrench for Trina to break in upon her precious
five thousand. She clung to this sum with a tenac