orenzo de' Medici and His Court" and the stone pug dog with its
goggle eyes.

"Why," he would cry, "I've had 'em ever since--ever since I BEGAN; long
before I knew you, Trina. That steel engraving I bought in Sacramento
one day when it was raining. I saw it in the window of a second-hand
store, and a fellow GAVE me that stone pug dog. He was a druggist. It
was in Sacramento too. We traded. I gave him a shaving-mug and a razor,
and he gave me the pug dog."

There were, however, two of his belongings that even Trina could not
induce him to part with.

"And your concertina, Mac," she prompted, as they were making out the
list for the second-hand dealer. "The concertina, and--oh, yes, the
canary and the bird cage."

"No."

"Mac, you MUST be reasonable. The concertina would bring quite a
sum, and the bird cage is as good as new. I'll sell the canary to the
bird-store man on Kearney Street."

"No."

"If you're going to make objections to every single thing, we might as
well quit. Come, now, Mac, the concertina and the bird cage. We'll put
them in Lot D."

"No."

"You'll have to come to it sooner or later. I'M giving up everything.
I'm going to put them down, see."

"No."

And she could get no further than that. The dentist did not lose his
temper, as in the case of the steel engraving or the stone pug dog;
he simply opposed her entreaties and persuasions with a passive, inert
obstinacy that nothing could move. In the end Trina was obliged to
submit. McTeague kept his concertina and his canary, even going so far
as to put them both away in the bedroom, attaching to them tags on which
he had scrawled in immense round letters, "Not for Sale."

One evening during that same week the dentist and his wife were in the
dismantled sitting-room. The room presented the appearance of a wreck.
The Nottingham lace curtains were down. The extension table was heaped
high with dishes, with tea and coffee pots, and with baskets of spoons
and knives and forks. The melodeon was hauled out into the middle of the
floor, and covered with a sheet marked "Lot A," the pictures were in a
pile in a corner, the chenille portieres were folded on top of the black
walnut table. The room was desolate, lamentable. Trina was going over
the inventory; McTeague, in his shirt sleeves, was smoking his pipe,
looking stupidly out of the window. All at once there was a brisk
rapping at the door.

"Come in," called Trina, apprehensively. Now-a-days a