Then the grind began.  It would have been easier for the McTeagues to have faced their misfortunes had they befallen them immediately after their marriage, when their love for each other was fresh and fine, and when they could have found a certain happiness in helping each other and sharing each other’s privations.  Trina, no doubt, loved her husband more than ever, in the sense that she felt she belonged to him.  But McTeague’s affection for his wife was dwindling a little every day—­had been dwindling for a long time, in fact.  He had become used to her by now.  She was part of the order of the things with which he found himself surrounded.  He saw nothing extraordinary about her; it was no longer a pleasure for him to kiss her and take her in his arms; she was merely his wife.  He did not dislike her; he did not love her.  She was his wife, that was all.  But he sadly missed and regretted all those little animal comforts which in the old prosperous life Trina had managed to find for him.  He missed the cabbage soups and steaming chocolate that Trina had taught him to like; he missed his good tobacco that Trina had educated him to prefer; he missed the Sunday afternoon walks that she had caused him to substitute in place of his nap in the operating chair; and he missed the bottled beer that she had induced him to drink in place of the steam beer from Frenna’s.  In the end he grew morose and sulky, and sometimes neglected to answer his wife when she spoke to him.  Besides this, Trina’s avarice was a perpetual annoyance to him.  Oftentimes when a considerable alleviation of this unhappiness could have been obtained at the expense of a nickel or a dime, Trina refused the money with a pettishness that was exasperating.

“No, no,” she would exclaim.  “To ride to the park Sunday afternoon, that means ten cents, and I can’t afford it.”

“Let’s walk there, then.”

“I’ve got to work.”

“But you’ve worked morning and afternoon every day this week.”

“I don’t care, I’ve got to work.”

There had been a time when Trina had hated the idea of McTeague drinking steam beer as common and vulgar.

“Say, let’s have a bottle of beer to-night.  We haven’t had a drop of beer in three weeks.”

“We can’t afford it.  It’s fifteen cents a bottle.”

“But I haven’t had a swallow of beer in three weeks.”

“Drink steam beer, then.  You’ve got a nickel.  I gave you a quarter day before yesterday.”

“But I don’t like steam beer now.”

It was so with everything.  Unfortunately, Trina had cultivated tastes in McTeague which now could not be gratified.  He had come to be very proud of his silk hat and “Prince Albert” coat, and liked to wear them on Sundays.  Trina had made him sell both.  He preferred “Yale mixture” in his pipe; Trina had made him come down to “Mastiff,” a five-cent tobacco with which he was once contented, but now abhorred.  He liked to wear clean cuffs;