When he was gone, Trina took the sixty cents she had stolen from him out of her pocket and recounted it.  “It’s sixty cents, all right,” she said proudly.  “But I do believe that dime is too smooth.”  She looked at it critically.  The clock on the power-house of the Sutter Street cable struck eight.  “Eight o’clock already,” she exclaimed.  “I must get to work.”  She cleared the breakfast things from the table, and drawing up her chair and her workbox began painting the sets of Noah’s ark animals she had whittled the day before.  She worked steadily all the morning.  At noon she lunched, warming over the coffee left from breakfast, and frying a couple of sausages.  By one she was bending over her table again.  Her fingers—­some of them lacerated by McTeague’s teeth—­flew, and the little pile of cheap toys in the basket at her elbow grew steadily.

“Where do all the toys go to?” she murmured.  “The thousands and thousands of these Noah’s arks that I have made—­horses and chickens and elephants—­and always there never seems to be enough.  It’s a good thing for me that children break their things, and that they all have to have birthdays and Christmases.”  She dipped her brush into a pot of Vandyke brown and painted one of the whittled toy horses in two strokes.  Then a touch of ivory black with a small flat brush created the tail and mane, and dots of Chinese white made the eyes.  The turpentine in the paint dried it almost immediately, and she tossed the completed little horse into the basket.

At six o’clock the dentist had not returned.  Trina waited until seven, and then put her work away, and ate her supper alone.

“I wonder what’s keeping Mac,” she exclaimed as the clock from the power-house on Sutter Street struck half-past seven.  “I know he’s drinking somewhere,” she cried, apprehensively.  “He had the money from his sign with him.”

At eight o’clock she threw a shawl over her head and went over to the harness shop.  If anybody would know where McTeague was it would be Heise.  But the harness-maker had seen nothing of him since the day before.

“He was in here yesterday afternoon, and we had a drink or two at Frenna’s.  Maybe he’s been in there to-day.”

“Oh, won’t you go in and see?” said Trina.  “Mac always came home to his supper—­he never likes to miss his meals—­and I’m getting frightened about him.”

Heise went into the barroom next door, and returned with no definite news.  Frenna had not seen the dentist since he had come in with the harness-maker the previous afternoon.  Trina even humbled herself to ask of the Ryers—­with whom they had quarrelled—­if they knew anything of the dentist’s whereabouts, but received a contemptuous negative.