a' had
it all yourself, Marcus Schouler," he muttered to himself on the stairs.
"You mushhead, you damn fool!"

Meanwhile, Marcus was becoming involved in the politics of his ward. As
secretary of the Polk Street Improvement Club--which soon developed
into quite an affair and began to assume the proportions of a Republican
political machine--he found he could make a little, a very little more
than enough to live on. At once he had given up his position as Old
Grannis's assistant in the dog hospital. Marcus felt that he needed a
wider sphere. He had his eye upon a place connected with the city pound.
When the great railroad strike occurred, he promptly got himself engaged
as deputy-sheriff, and spent a memorable week in Sacramento, where he
involved himself in more than one terrible melee with the strikers.
Marcus had that quickness of temper and passionate readiness to take
offence which passes among his class for bravery. But whatever were
his motives, his promptness to face danger could not for a moment be
doubted. After the strike he returned to Polk Street, and throwing
himself into the Improvement Club, heart, soul, and body, soon became
one of its ruling spirits. In a certain local election, where a huge
paving contract was at stake, the club made itself felt in the ward, and
Marcus so managed his cards and pulled his wires that, at the end of the
matter, he found himself some four hundred dollars to the good.

When McTeague came out of his "Parlors" at noon of the day upon which
Trina had heard the news of Maria Macapa's intended marriage, he found
Trina burning coffee on a shovel in the sitting-room. Try as she would,
Trina could never quite eradicate from their rooms a certain faint
and indefinable odor, particularly offensive to her. The smell of the
photographer's chemicals persisted in spite of all Trina could do to
combat it. She burnt pastilles and Chinese punk, and even, as now,
coffee on a shovel, all to no purpose. Indeed, the only drawback to
their delightful home was the general unpleasant smell that pervaded
it--a smell that arose partly from the photographer's chemicals, partly
from the cooking in the little kitchen, and partly from the ether and
creosote of the dentist's "Parlors."

As McTeague came in to lunch on this occasion, he found the table
already laid, a red cloth figured with white flowers was spread, and as
he took his seat his wife put down the shovel on a chair and brought
in the st