money and
her perverted love for her husband when he was brutal. She was a strange
woman during these days.

Trina had come to be on very intimate terms with Maria Macapa, and
in the end the dentist's wife and the maid of all work became great
friends. Maria was constantly in and out of Trina's room, and, whenever
she could, Trina threw a shawl over her head and returned Maria's calls.
Trina could reach Zerkow's dirty house without going into the street.
The back yard of the flat had a gate that opened into a little inclosure
where Zerkow kept his decrepit horse and ramshackle wagon, and from
thence Trina could enter directly into Maria's kitchen. Trina made long
visits to Maria during the morning in her dressing-gown and curl papers,
and the two talked at great length over a cup of tea served on the edge
of the sink or a corner of the laundry table. The talk was all of their
husbands and of what to do when they came home in aggressive moods.

"You never ought to fight um," advised Maria. "It only makes um worse.
Just hump your back, and it's soonest over."

They told each other of their husbands' brutalities, taking a strange
sort of pride in recounting some particularly savage blow, each trying
to make out that her own husband was the most cruel. They critically
compared each other's bruises, each one glad when she could exhibit
the worst. They exaggerated, they invented details, and, as if proud of
their beatings, as if glorying in their husbands' mishandling, lied to
each other, magnifying their own maltreatment. They had long and excited
arguments as to which were the most effective means of punishment, the
rope's ends and cart whips such as Zerkow used, or the fists and backs
of hair-brushes affected by McTeague. Maria contended that the lash of
the whip hurt the most; Trina, that the butt did the most injury.

Maria showed Trina the holes in the walls and the loosened boards in the
flooring where Zerkow had been searching for the gold plate. Of late
he had been digging in the back yard and had ransacked the hay in his
horse-shed for the concealed leather chest he imagined he would find.
But he was becoming impatient, evidently.

"The way he goes on," Maria told Trina, "is somethun dreadful. He's
gettun regularly sick with it--got a fever every night--don't sleep, and
when he does, talks to himself. Says 'More'n a hundred pieces, an' every
one of 'em gold. More'n a hundred pieces, an' every one of 'em gold.'