period of the breaking up of the
McTeague household.

"Dreadful, dreadful," murmured the old Englishman, his hand going
tremulously to his chin. "It seems unjust; it does. But Mr. Schouler
could not have set them on to do it. I can't quite believe it of him."

"Of Marcus!" cried Trina. "Hoh! Why, he threw his knife at Mac one time,
and another time he bit him, actually bit him with his teeth, while they
were wrestling just for fun. Marcus would do anything to injure Mac."

"Dear, dear," returned Old Grannis, genuinely pained. "I had always
believed Schouler to be such a good fellow."

"That's because you're so good yourself, Mr. Grannis," responded Trina.

"I tell you what, Doc," declared Heise the harness-maker, shaking his
finger impressively at the dentist, "you must fight it; you must appeal
to the courts; you've been practising too long to be debarred now. The
statute of limitations, you know."

"No, no," Trina had exclaimed, when the dentist had repeated this advice
to her. "No, no, don't go near the law courts. I know them. The lawyers
take all your money, and you lose your case. We're bad off as it is,
without lawing about it."

Then at last came the sale. McTeague and Trina, whom Miss Baker had
invited to her room for that day, sat there side by side, holding each
other's hands, listening nervously to the turmoil that rose to them from
the direction of their suite. From nine o'clock till dark the crowds
came and went. All Polk Street seemed to have invaded the suite, lured
on by the red flag that waved from the front windows. It was a fete, a
veritable holiday, for the whole neighborhood. People with no thought
of buying presented themselves. Young women--the candy-store girls and
florist's apprentices--came to see the fun, walking arm in arm from room
to room, making jokes about the pretty lithographs and mimicking the
picture of the two little girls saying their prayers.

"Look here," they would cry, "look here what she used for
curtains--NOTTINGHAM lace, actually! Whoever thinks of buying Nottingham
lace now-a-days? Say, don't that JAR you?"

"And a melodeon," another one would exclaim, lifting the sheet. "A
melodeon, when you can rent a piano for a dollar a week; and say, I
really believe they used to eat in the kitchen."

"Dollarn-half, dollarn-half, dollarn-half, give me two," intoned the
auctioneer from the second-hand store. By noon the crowd became a jam.
Wagons backed up to the curb outsid