“You do as I tell you.  Get some steak, or chops, or something.”

“Please, Mac, dear.”

“Go on, now.  I’ll bite your fingers again pretty soon.”

“But——­”

The dentist took a step towards her, snatching at her hand.

“All right, I’ll go,” cried Trina, wincing and shrinking.  “I’ll go.”

She did not get the chops at the big market, however.  Instead, she hurried to a cheaper butcher shop on a side street two blocks away, and bought fifteen cents’ worth of chops from a side of mutton some two or three days old.  She was gone some little time.

“Give me the change,” exclaimed the dentist as soon as she returned.  Trina handed him a quarter; and when McTeague was about to protest, broke in upon him with a rapid stream of talk that confused him upon the instant.  But for that matter, it was never difficult for Trina to deceive the dentist.  He never went to the bottom of things.  He would have believed her if she had told him the chops had cost a dollar.

“There’s sixty cents saved, anyhow,” thought Trina, as she clutched the money in her pocket to keep it from rattling.

Trina cooked the chops, and they breakfasted in silence.  “Now,” said McTeague as he rose, wiping the coffee from his thick mustache with the hollow of his palm, “now I’m going fishing, rain or no rain.  I’m going to be gone all day.”

He stood for a moment at the door, his fish-line in his hand, swinging the heavy sinker back and forth.  He looked at Trina as she cleared away the breakfast things.

“So long,” said he, nodding his huge square-cut head.  This amiability in the matter of leave taking was unusual.  Trina put the dishes down and came up to him, her little chin, once so adorable, in the air: 

“Kiss me good-by, Mac,” she said, putting her arms around his neck.  “You do love me a little yet, don’t you, Mac?  We’ll be happy again some day.  This is hard times now, but we’ll pull out.  You’ll find something to do pretty soon.”

“I guess so,” growled McTeague, allowing her to kiss him.

The canary was stirring nimbly in its cage, and just now broke out into a shrill trilling, its little throat bulging and quivering.  The dentist stared at it.  “Say,” he remarked slowly, “I think I’ll take that bird of mine along.”

“Sell it?” inquired Trina.

“Yes, yes, sell it.”

“Well, you are coming to your senses at last,” answered Trina, approvingly.  “But don’t you let the bird-store man cheat you.  That’s a good songster; and with the cage, you ought to make him give you five dollars.  You stick out for that at first, anyhow.”

McTeague unhooked the cage and carefully wrapped it in an old newspaper, remarking, “He might get cold.  Well, so long,” he repeated, “so long.”

“Good-by, Mac.”