of her nose ran an adorable little line of freckles.  But it was to her hair that one’s attention was most attracted.  Heaps and heaps of blue-black coils and braids, a royal crown of swarthy bands, a veritable sable tiara, heavy, abundant, odorous.  All the vitality that should have given color to her face seemed to have been absorbed by this marvellous hair.  It was the coiffure of a queen that shadowed the pale temples of this little bourgeoise.  So heavy was it that it tipped her head backward, and the position thrust her chin out a little.  It was a charming poise, innocent, confiding, almost infantile.

She was dressed all in black, very modest and plain.  The effect of her pale face in all this contrasting black was almost monastic.

“Well,” exclaimed Marcus suddenly, “I got to go.  Must get back to work.  Don’t hurt her too much, Mac.  S’long, Trina.”

McTeague and Trina were left alone.  He was embarrassed, troubled.  These young girls disturbed and perplexed him.  He did not like them, obstinately cherishing that intuitive suspicion of all things feminine—­the perverse dislike of an overgrown boy.  On the other hand, she was perfectly at her ease; doubtless the woman in her was not yet awakened; she was yet, as one might say, without sex.  She was almost like a boy, frank, candid, unreserved.

She took her place in the operating chair and told him what was the matter, looking squarely into his face.  She had fallen out of a swing the afternoon of the preceding day; one of her teeth had been knocked loose and the other altogether broken out.

McTeague listened to her with apparent stolidity, nodding his head from time to time as she spoke.  The keenness of his dislike of her as a woman began to be blunted.  He thought she was rather pretty, that he even liked her because she was so small, so prettily made, so good natured and straightforward.

“Let’s have a look at your teeth,” he said, picking up his mirror.  “You better take your hat off.”  She leaned back in her chair and opened her mouth, showing the rows of little round teeth, as white and even as the kernels on an ear of green corn, except where an ugly gap came at the side.

McTeague put the mirror into her mouth, touching one and another of her teeth with the handle of an excavator.  By and by he straightened up, wiping the moisture from the mirror on his coat-sleeve.

“Well, Doctor,” said the girl, anxiously, “it’s a dreadful disfigurement, isn’t it?” adding, “What can you do about it?”

“Well,” answered McTeague, slowly, looking vaguely about on the floor of the room, “the roots of the broken tooth are still in the gum; they’ll have to come out, and I guess I’ll have to pull that other bicuspid.  Let me look again.  Yes,” he went on in a moment, peering into her mouth with the mirror, “I guess that’ll have to come out, too.”  The tooth was loose, discolored, and evidently dead.  “It’s a curious case,” McTeague went on.  “I don’t know as I ever had a tooth like that before.  It’s what’s called necrosis.  It don’t often happen.  It’ll have to come out sure.”