would take McTeague's arm, and he, very much
embarrassed at that, would thrust both hands into his pockets and
pretend not to notice. They stopped before the jewellers' and milliners'
windows, finding a great delight in picking out things for each other,
saying how they would choose this and that if they were rich. Trina did
most of the talking. McTeague merely approving by a growl or a movement
of the head or shoulders; she was interested in the displays of some of
the cheaper stores, but he found an irresistible charm in an enormous
golden molar with four prongs that hung at a corner of Kearney Street.
Sometimes they would look at Mars or at the moon through the street
telescopes or sit for a time in the rotunda of a vast department store
where a band played every evening.

Occasionally they met Heise the harness-maker and his wife, with
whom they had become acquainted. Then the evening was concluded by a
four-cornered party in the Luxembourg, a quiet German restaurant under
a theatre. Trina had a tamale and a glass of beer, Mrs. Heise (who was
a decayed writing teacher) ate salads, with glasses of grenadine and
currant syrups. Heise drank cocktails and whiskey straight, and urged
the dentist to join him. But McTeague was obstinate, shaking his head.
"I can't drink that stuff," he said. "It don't agree with me, somehow;
I go kinda crazy after two glasses." So he gorged himself with beer and
frankfurter sausages plastered with German mustard.

When the annual Mechanic's Fair opened, McTeague and Trina often spent
their evenings there, studying the exhibits carefully (since in Trina's
estimation education meant knowing things and being able to talk about
them). Wearying of this they would go up into the gallery, and, leaning
over, look down into the huge amphitheatre full of light and color and
movement.

There rose to them the vast shuffling noise of thousands of feet and
a subdued roar of conversation like the sound of a great mill. Mingled
with this was the purring of distant machinery, the splashing of a
temporary fountain, and the rhythmic jangling of a brass band, while
in the piano exhibit a hired performer was playing upon a concert
grand with a great flourish. Nearer at hand they could catch ends of
conversation and notes of laughter, the noise of moving dresses, and
the rustle of stiffly starched skirts. Here and there school children
elbowed their way through the crowd, crying shrilly, their hands full of