The whole scene—­the clean kitchen and its clean brick floor; the smell of coffee that lingered in the air; Trina herself, fresh as if from a bath, and singing at her work; the morning sun, striking obliquely through the white muslin half-curtain of the window and spanning the little kitchen with a bridge of golden mist—­gave off, as it were, a note of gayety that was not to be resisted.  Through the opened top of the window came the noises of Polk Street, already long awake.  One heard the chanting of street cries, the shrill calling of children on their way to school, the merry rattle of a butcher’s cart, the brisk noise of hammering, or the occasional prolonged roll of a cable car trundling heavily past, with a vibrant whirring of its jostled glass and the joyous clanging of its bells.

“What is it, Mac, dear?” said Trina.

McTeague shut the door behind him with his heel and handed her the letter.  Trina read it through.  Then suddenly her small hand gripped tightly upon the sponge, so that the water started from it and dripped in a little pattering deluge upon the bricks.

The letter—­or rather printed notice—­informed McTeague that he had never received a diploma from a dental college, and that in consequence he was forbidden to practise his profession any longer.  A legal extract bearing upon the case was attached in small type.

“Why, what’s all this?” said Trina, calmly, without thought as yet.

“I don’ know, I don’ know,” answered her husband.

“You can’t practise any longer,” continued Trina,—­“’is herewith prohibited and enjoined from further continuing——­’” She re-read the extract, her forehead lifting and puckering.  She put the sponge carefully away in its wire rack over the sink, and drew up a chair to the table, spreading out the notice before her.  “Sit down,” she said to McTeague.  “Draw up to the table here, Mac, and let’s see what this is.”

“I got it this morning,” murmured the dentist.  “It just now came.  I was making some fillings—­there, in the ‘Parlors,’ in the window—­and the postman shoved it through the door.  I thought it was a number of the ‘American System of Dentistry’ at first, and when I’d opened it and looked at it I thought I’d better——­”

“Say, Mac,” interrupted Trina, looking up from the notice, “Didn’t you ever go to a dental college?”

“Huh?  What?  What?” exclaimed McTeague.

“How did you learn to be a dentist?  Did you go to a college?”

“I went along with a fellow who came to the mine once.  My mother sent me.  We used to go from one camp to another.  I sharpened his excavators for him, and put up his notices in the towns—­stuck them up in the post-offices and on the doors of the Odd Fellows’ halls.  He had a wagon.”

“But didn’t you never go to a college?”

“Huh?  What?  College?  No, I never went.  I learned from the fellow.”

Trina rolled down her sleeves.  She was a little paler than usual.  She fastened the buttons into the cuffs and said: