Little by little the boy subsided, swallowing his sobs, knuckling his eyes, gazing ruefully at the spot where the boat had sunk.  “Dot is better soh,” commented Mr. Sieppe, finally releasing him.  “Next dime berhaps you will your fat’er better pelief.  Now, no more.  We will der glams ge-dig, Mommer, a fire.  Ach, himmel! we have der pfeffer forgotten.”

The work of clam digging began at once, the little boys taking off their shoes and stockings.  At first August refused to be comforted, and it was not until his father drove him into the water with his gold-headed cane that he consented to join the others.

What a day that was for McTeague!  What a never-to-be-forgotten day!  He was with Trina constantly.  They laughed together—­she demurely, her lips closed tight, her little chin thrust out, her small pale nose, with its adorable little freckles, wrinkling; he roared with all the force of his lungs, his enormous mouth distended, striking sledge-hammer blows upon his knee with his clenched fist.

The lunch was delicious.  Trina and her mother made a clam chowder that melted in one’s mouth.  The lunch baskets were emptied.  The party were fully two hours eating.  There were huge loaves of rye bread full of grains of chickweed.  There were weiner-wurst and frankfurter sausages.  There was unsalted butter.  There were pretzels.  There was cold underdone chicken, which one ate in slices, plastered with a wonderful kind of mustard that did not sting.  There were dried apples, that gave Mr. Sieppe the hiccoughs.  There were a dozen bottles of beer, and, last of all, a crowning achievement, a marvellous Gotha truffle.  After lunch came tobacco.  Stuffed to the eyes, McTeague drowsed over his pipe, prone on his back in the sun, while Trina, Mrs. Sieppe, and Selina washed the dishes.  In the afternoon Mr. Sieppe disappeared.  They heard the reports of his rifle on the range.  The others swarmed over the park, now around the swings, now in the Casino, now in the museum, now invading the merry-go-round.

At half-past five o’clock Mr. Sieppe marshalled the party together.  It was time to return home.

The family insisted that Marcus and McTeague should take supper with them at their home and should stay over night.  Mrs. Sieppe argued they could get no decent supper if they went back to the city at that hour; that they could catch an early morning boat and reach their business in good time.  The two friends accepted.

The Sieppes lived in a little box of a house at the foot of B Street, the first house to the right as one went up from the station.  It was two stories high, with a funny red mansard roof of oval slates.  The interior was cut up into innumerable tiny rooms, some of them so small as to be hardly better than sleeping closets.  In the back yard was a contrivance for pumping water from the cistern that interested McTeague at once.  It was a dog-wheel, a huge revolving box in which the unhappy black greyhound spent most of his waking hours.  It was his kennel; he slept in it.  From time to time during the day Mrs. Sieppe appeared on the back doorstep, crying shrilly, “Hoop, hoop!” She threw lumps of coal at him, waking him to his work.