of a sudden, he slipped
back into the old habits (that had been his before he knew Trina) with
an ease that was surprising. Sundays he dined at the car conductors'
coffee-joint once more, and spent the afternoon lying full length upon
the bed, crop-full, stupid, warm, smoking his huge pipe, drinking his
steam beer, and playing his six mournful tunes upon his concertina,
dozing off to sleep towards four o'clock.

The sale of their furniture had, after paying the rent and outstanding
bills, netted about a hundred and thirty dollars. Trina believed that
the auctioneer from the second-hand store had swindled and cheated
them and had made a great outcry to no effect. But she had arranged the
affair with the auctioneer herself, and offset her disappointment in the
matter of the sale by deceiving her husband as to the real amount of
the returns. It was easy to lie to McTeague, who took everything for
granted; and since the occasion of her trickery with the money that was
to have been sent to her mother, Trina had found falsehood easier than
ever.

"Seventy dollars is all the auctioneer gave me," she told her husband;
"and after paying the balance due on the rent, and the grocer's bill,
there's only fifty left."

"Only fifty?" murmured McTeague, wagging his head, "only fifty? Think of
that."

"Only fifty," declared Trina. Afterwards she said to herself with a
certain admiration for her cleverness:

"Couldn't save sixty dollars much easier than that," and she had added
the hundred and thirty to the little hoard in the chamois-skin bag and
brass match-box in the bottom of her trunk.

In these first months of their misfortunes the routine of the McTeagues
was as follows: They rose at seven and breakfasted in their room,
Trina cooking the very meagre meal on an oil stove. Immediately after
breakfast Trina sat down to her work of whittling the Noah's ark
animals, and McTeague took himself off to walk down town. He had by the
greatest good luck secured a position with a manufacturer of surgical
instruments, where his manual dexterity in the making of excavators,
pluggers, and other dental contrivances stood him in fairly good stead.
He lunched at a sailor's boarding-house near the water front, and in the
afternoon worked till six. He was home at six-thirty, and he and Trina
had supper together in the "ladies' dining parlor," an adjunct of
the car conductors' coffee-joint. Trina, meanwhile, had worked at her
whittling all day