amois-skin
sack she had made from an old chest protector. Just now, yielding to
an impulse which often seized her, she drew out the match-box and
the chamois sack, and emptying the contents on the bed, counted them
carefully. It came to one hundred and sixty-five dollars, all told. She
counted it and recounted it and made little piles of it, and rubbed the
gold pieces between the folds of her apron until they shone.

"Ah, yes, ten dollars is all I can afford to give Mac," said Trina,
"and even then, think of it, ten dollars--it will be four or five months
before I can save that again. But, dear old Mac, I know it would make
him feel glad, and perhaps," she added, suddenly taken with an idea,
"perhaps Mac will refuse to take it."

She took a ten-dollar piece from the heap and put the rest away. Then
she paused:

"No, not the gold piece," she said to herself. "It's too pretty. He can
have the silver." She made the change and counted out ten silver dollars
into her palm. But what a difference it made in the appearance and
weight of the little chamois bag! The bag was shrunken and withered,
long wrinkles appeared running downward from the draw-string. It was a
lamentable sight. Trina looked longingly at the ten broad pieces in her
hand. Then suddenly all her intuitive desire of saving, her instinct
of hoarding, her love of money for the money's sake, rose strong within
her.

"No, no, no," she said. "I can't do it. It may be mean, but I can't help
it. It's stronger than I." She returned the money to the bag and locked
it and the brass match-box in her trunk, turning the key with a long
breath of satisfaction.

She was a little troubled, however, as she went back into the
sitting-room and took up her work.

"I didn't use to be so stingy," she told herself. "Since I won in the
lottery I've become a regular little miser. It's growing on me, but
never mind, it's a good fault, and, anyhow, I can't help it."

CHAPTER 11

On that particular morning the McTeagues had risen a half hour earlier
than usual and taken a hurried breakfast in the kitchen on the deal
table with its oilcloth cover. Trina was house-cleaning that week and
had a presentiment of a hard day's work ahead of her, while McTeague
remembered a seven o'clock appointment with a little German shoemaker.

At about eight o'clock, when the dentist had been in his office for over
an hour, Trina descended upon the bedroom, a towel about her head
and the roll