There were, however, two of his belongings that even Trina could not induce him to part with.

“And your concertina, Mac,” she prompted, as they were making out the list for the second-hand dealer.  “The concertina, and—­oh, yes, the canary and the bird cage.”

“No.”

“Mac, you must be reasonable.  The concertina would bring quite a sum, and the bird cage is as good as new.  I’ll sell the canary to the bird-store man on Kearney Street.”

“No.”

“If you’re going to make objections to every single thing, we might as well quit.  Come, now, Mac, the concertina and the bird cage.  We’ll put them in Lot D.”

“No.”

“You’ll have to come to it sooner or later.  I’m giving up everything.  I’m going to put them down, see.”

“No.”

And she could get no further than that.  The dentist did not lose his temper, as in the case of the steel engraving or the stone pug dog; he simply opposed her entreaties and persuasions with a passive, inert obstinacy that nothing could move.  In the end Trina was obliged to submit.  McTeague kept his concertina and his canary, even going so far as to put them both away in the bedroom, attaching to them tags on which he had scrawled in immense round letters, “Not for Sale.”

One evening during that same week the dentist and his wife were in the dismantled sitting-room.  The room presented the appearance of a wreck.  The Nottingham lace curtains were down.  The extension table was heaped high with dishes, with tea and coffee pots, and with baskets of spoons and knives and forks.  The melodeon was hauled out into the middle of the floor, and covered with a sheet marked “Lot A,” the pictures were in a pile in a corner, the chenille portieres were folded on top of the black walnut table.  The room was desolate, lamentable.  Trina was going over the inventory; McTeague, in his shirt sleeves, was smoking his pipe, looking stupidly out of the window.  All at once there was a brisk rapping at the door.

“Come in,” called Trina, apprehensively.  Now-a-days at every unexpected visit she anticipated a fresh calamity.  The door opened to let in a young man wearing a checked suit, a gay cravat, and a marvellously figured waistcoat.  Trina and McTeague recognized him at once.  It was the Other Dentist, the debonair fellow whose clients were the barbers and the young women of the candy stores and soda-water fountains, the poser, the wearer of waistcoats, who bet money on greyhound races.

“How’do?” said this one, bowing gracefully to the McTeagues as they stared at him distrustfully.

“How’do?  They tell me, Doctor, that you are going out of the profession.”

McTeague muttered indistinctly behind his mustache and glowered at him.

“Well, say,” continued the other, cheerily, “I’d like to talk business with you.  That sign of yours, that big golden tooth that you got outside of your window, I don’t suppose you’ll have any further use for it.  Maybe I’d buy it if we could agree on terms.”