“Huh—­what do you think, Trina?”

Trina put her chin in the air, tilting back her heavy tiara of swarthy hair.

“I am not so sure yet.  Thirty-five dollars and the water extra.  I don’t think we can afford it, Mac.”

“Ah, pshaw!” growled the dentist, “sure we can.”

“It isn’t only that,” said Trina, “but it’ll cost so much to make the change.”

“Ah, you talk’s though we were paupers.  Ain’t we got five thousand dollars?”

Trina flushed on the instant, even to the lobes of her tiny pale ears, and put her lips together.

“Now, Mac, you know I don’t want you should talk like that.  That money’s never, never to be touched.”

“And you’ve been savun up a good deal, besides,” went on McTeague, exasperated at Trina’s persistent economies.  “How much money have you got in that little brass match-safe in the bottom of your trunk?  Pretty near a hundred dollars, I guess—­ah, sure.”  He shut his eyes and nodded his great head in a knowing way.

Trina had more than that in the brass match-safe in question, but her instinct of hoarding had led her to keep it a secret from her husband.  Now she lied to him with prompt fluency.

“A hundred dollars!  What are you talking of, Mac?  I’ve not got fifty.  I’ve not got thirty.”

“Oh, let’s take that little house,” broke in McTeague.  “We got the chance now, and it may never come again.  Come on, Trina, shall we?  Say, come on, shall we, huh?”

“We’d have to be awful saving if we did, Mac.”

“Well, sure, I say let’s take it.”

“I don’t know,” said Trina, hesitating.  “Wouldn’t it be lovely to have a house all to ourselves?  But let’s not decide until to-morrow.”

The next day the owner of the house called.  Trina was out at her morning’s marketing and the dentist, who had no one in the chair at the time, received him in the “Parlors.”  Before he was well aware of it, McTeague had concluded the bargain.  The owner bewildered him with a world of phrases, made him believe that it would be a great saving to move into the little house, and finally offered it to him “water free.”

“All right, all right,” said McTeague, “I’ll take it.”

The other immediately produced a paper.

“Well, then, suppose you sign for the first month’s rent, and we’ll call it a bargain.  That’s business, you know,” and McTeague, hesitating, signed.

“I’d like to have talked more with my wife about it first,” he said, dubiously.

“Oh, that’s all right,” answered the owner, easily.  “I guess if the head of the family wants a thing, that’s enough.”

McTeague could not wait until lunch time to tell the news to Trina.  As soon as he heard her come in, he laid down the plaster-of-paris mould he was making and went out into the kitchen and found her chopping up onions.

“Well, Trina,” he said, “we got that house.  I’ve taken it.”