fight. Come along, Mister
Grannis," and he took the old Englishman away.

Little Miss Baker hastened to her room and locked herself in. She was
excited and upset during all the rest of the day, and listened eagerly
for Old Grannis's return that evening. He went instantly to work binding
up "The Breeder and Sportsman," and back numbers of the "Nation." She
heard him softly draw his chair and the table on which he had placed his
little binding apparatus close to the wall. At once she did the same,
brewing herself a cup of tea. All through that evening the two old
people "kept company" with each other, after their own peculiar fashion.
"Setting out with each other" Miss Baker had begun to call it. That they
had been presented, that they had even been forced to talk together, had
made no change in their relative positions. Almost immediately they
had fallen back into their old ways again, quite unable to master their
timidity, to overcome the stifling embarrassment that seized upon them
when in each other's presence. It was a sort of hypnotism, a thing
stronger than themselves. But they were not altogether dissatisfied with
the way things had come to be. It was their little romance, their
last, and they were living through it with supreme enjoyment and calm
contentment.

Marcus Schouler still occupied his old room on the floor above the
McTeagues. They saw but little of him, however. At long intervals the
dentist or his wife met him on the stairs of the flat. Sometimes he
would stop and talk with Trina, inquiring after the Sieppes, asking her
if Mr. Sieppe had yet heard of any one with whom he, Marcus, could "go
in with on a ranch." McTeague, Marcus merely nodded to. Never had the
quarrel between the two men been completely patched up. It did not seem
possible to the dentist now that Marcus had ever been his "pal," that
they had ever taken long walks together. He was sorry that he had
treated Marcus gratis for an ulcerated tooth, while Marcus daily
recalled the fact that he had given up his "girl" to his friend--the
girl who had won a fortune--as the great mistake of his life. Only
once since the wedding had he called upon Trina, at a time when he knew
McTeague would be out. Trina had shown him through the rooms and had
told him, innocently enough, how gay was their life there. Marcus had
come away fairly sick with envy; his rancor against the dentist--and
against himself, for that matter--knew no bounds. "And you might '