Ah, no, it was not very gay, that life of hers, when one had to rustle for two, cook and work and wash, to say nothing of paying the rent.  What odds was it if she was slatternly, dirty, coarse?  Was there time to make herself look otherwise, and who was there to be pleased when she was all prinked out?  Surely not a great brute of a husband who bit you like a dog, and kicked and pounded you as though you were made of iron.  Ah, no, better let things go, and take it as easy as you could.  Hump your back, and it was soonest over.

The one room grew abominably dirty, reeking with the odors of cooking and of “non-poisonous” paint.  The bed was not made until late in the afternoon, sometimes not at all.  Dirty, unwashed crockery, greasy knives, sodden fragments of yesterday’s meals cluttered the table, while in one corner was the heap of evil-smelling, dirty linen.  Cockroaches appeared in the crevices of the woodwork, the wall-paper bulged from the damp walls and began to peel.  Trina had long ago ceased to dust or to wipe the furniture with a bit of rag.  The grime grew thick upon the window panes and in the corners of the room.  All the filth of the alley invaded their quarters like a rising muddy tide.

Between the windows, however, the faded photograph of the couple in their wedding finery looked down upon the wretchedness, Trina still holding her set bouquet straight before her, McTeague standing at her side, his left foot forward, in the attitude of a Secretary of State; while near by hung the canary, the one thing the dentist clung to obstinately, piping and chittering all day in its little gilt prison.

And the tooth, the gigantic golden molar of French gilt, enormous and ungainly, sprawled its branching prongs in one corner of the room, by the footboard of the bed.  The McTeague’s had come to use it as a sort of substitute for a table.  After breakfast and supper Trina piled the plates and greasy dishes upon it to have them out of the way.

One afternoon the Other Dentist, McTeague’s old-time rival, the wearer of marvellous waistcoats, was surprised out of all countenance to receive a visit from McTeague.  The Other Dentist was in his operating room at the time, at work upon a plaster-of-paris mould.  To his call of “’Come right in.  Don’t you see the sign, ’Enter without knocking’?” McTeague came in.  He noted at once how airy and cheerful was the room.  A little fire coughed and tittered on the hearth, a brindled greyhound sat on his haunches watching it intently, a great mirror over the mantle offered to view an array of actresses’ pictures thrust between the glass and the frame, and a big bunch of freshly-cut violets stood in a glass bowl on the polished cherrywood table.  The Other Dentist came forward briskly, exclaiming cheerfully: 

“Oh, Doctor—­Mister McTeague, how do? how do?”