ootboard of
the bed. She saw his red, congested face; the huge mouth wide open; his
unclean shirt, with its frayed wristbands; and his huge feet encased
in thick woollen socks. Then her grief and the sense of her unhappiness
returned more poignant than ever. She stretched her arms out in front of
her on her work-table, and, burying her face in them, cried and sobbed
as though her heart would break.

The rain continued. The panes of the single window ran with sheets of
water; the eaves dripped incessantly. It grew darker. The tiny, grimy
room, full of the smells of cooking and of "non-poisonous" paint, took
on an aspect of desolation and cheerlessness lamentable beyond words.
The canary in its little gilt prison chittered feebly from time to time.
Sprawled at full length upon the bed, the dentist snored and snored,
stupefied, inert, his legs wide apart, his hands lying palm upward at
his sides.

At last Trina raised her head, with a long, trembling breath. She rose,
and going over to the washstand, poured some water from the pitcher into
the basin, and washed her face and swollen eyelids, and rearranged her
hair. Suddenly, as she was about to return to her work, she was struck
with an idea.

"I wonder," she said to herself, "I wonder where he got the money to buy
his whiskey." She searched the pockets of his coat, which he had flung
into a corner of the room, and even came up to him as he lay upon the
bed and went through the pockets of his vest and trousers. She found
nothing.

"I wonder," she murmured, "I wonder if he's got any money he don't tell
me about. I'll have to look out for that."

CHAPTER 16

A week passed, then a fortnight, then a month. It was a month of the
greatest anxiety and unquietude for Trina. McTeague was out of a job,
could find nothing to do; and Trina, who saw the impossibility of saving
as much money as usual out of her earnings under the present conditions,
was on the lookout for cheaper quarters. In spite of his outcries and
sulky resistance Trina had induced her husband to consent to such a
move, bewildering him with a torrent of phrases and marvellous columns
of figures by which she proved conclusively that they were in a
condition but one remove from downright destitution.

The dentist continued idle. Since his ill success with the manufacturers
of surgical instruments he had made but two attempts to secure a job.
Trina had gone to see Uncle Oelbermann and had obtained for Mc