been engaged; "perhaps almost as much as ever. I'll have three hundred
dollars pretty soon, and Mac thinks it's only two hundred. It's almost
two hundred and fifty; and I'll get a good deal out of the sale."

But this sale was a long agony. It lasted a week. Everything
went--everything but the few big pieces that went with the suite, and
that belonged to the photographer. The melodeon, the chairs, the black
walnut table before which they were married, the extension table in
the sitting-room, the kitchen table with its oilcloth cover, the framed
lithographs from the English illustrated papers, the very carpets on
the floors. But Trina's heart nearly broke when the kitchen utensils and
furnishings began to go. Every pot, every stewpan, every knife and fork,
was an old friend. How she had worked over them! How clean she had kept
them! What a pleasure it had been to invade that little brick-paved
kitchen every morning, and to wash up and put to rights after breakfast,
turning on the hot water at the sink, raking down the ashes in the
cook-stove, going and coming over the warm bricks, her head in the air,
singing at her work, proud in the sense of her proprietorship and her
independence! How happy had she been the day after her marriage when she
had first entered that kitchen and knew that it was all her own! And
how well she remembered her raids upon the bargain counters in the
house-furnishing departments of the great down-town stores! And now it
was all to go. Some one else would have it all, while she was relegated
to cheap restaurants and meals cooked by hired servants. Night after
night she sobbed herself to sleep at the thought of her past happiness
and her present wretchedness. However, she was not alone in her
unhappiness.

"Anyhow, I'm going to keep the steel engraving an' the stone pug dog,"
declared the dentist, his fist clenching. When it had come to the
sale of his office effects McTeague had rebelled with the instinctive
obstinacy of a boy, shutting his eyes and ears. Only little by little
did Trina induce him to part with his office furniture. He fought
over every article, over the little iron stove, the bed-lounge, the
marble-topped centre table, the whatnot in the corner, the bound volumes
of "Allen's Practical Dentist," the rifle manufacturer's calendar, and
the prim, military chairs. A veritable scene took place between him and
his wife before he could bring himself to part with the steel engraving
of "L