“Are they on the right-hand side?  I want on the right—­no, I want on the left.  I want—­I don’ know, I don’ know.”

The seller roared.  McTeague moved slowly away, gazing stupidly at the blue slips of pasteboard.  Two girls took his place at the wicket.  In another moment McTeague came back, peering over the girls’ shoulders and calling to the seller: 

“Are these for Monday night?”

The other disdained reply.  McTeague retreated again timidly, thrusting the tickets into his immense wallet.  For a moment he stood thoughtful on the steps of the entrance.  Then all at once he became enraged, he did not know exactly why; somehow he felt himself slighted.  Once more he came back to the wicket.

“You can’t make small of me,” he shouted over the girls’ shoulders; “you—­you can’t make small of me.  I’ll thump you in the head, you little—­you little—­you little—­little—­little pup.”  The ticket seller shrugged his shoulders wearily.  “A dollar and a half,” he said to the two girls.

McTeague glared at him and breathed loudly.  Finally he decided to let the matter drop.  He moved away, but on the steps was once more seized with a sense of injury and outraged dignity.

“You can’t make small of me,” he called back a last time, wagging his head and shaking his fist.  “I will—­I will—­I will—­yes, I will.”  He went off muttering.

At last Monday night came.  McTeague met the Sieppes at the ferry, dressed in a black Prince Albert coat and his best slate-blue trousers, and wearing the made-up lawn necktie that Marcus had selected for him.  Trina was very pretty in the black dress that McTeague knew so well.  She wore a pair of new gloves.  Mrs. Sieppe had on lisle-thread mits, and carried two bananas and an orange in a net reticule.  “For Owgooste,” she confided to him.  Owgooste was in a Fauntleroy “costume” very much too small for him.  Already he had been crying.

“Woult you pelief, Doktor, dot bube has torn his stockun alreatty?  Walk in der front, you; stop cryun.  Where is dot berliceman?”

At the door of the theatre McTeague was suddenly seized with a panic terror.  He had lost the tickets.  He tore through his pockets, ransacked his wallet.  They were nowhere to be found.  All at once he remembered, and with a gasp of relief removed his hat and took them out from beneath the sweatband.

The party entered and took their places.  It was absurdly early.  The lights were all darkened, the ushers stood under the galleries in groups, the empty auditorium echoing with their noisy talk.  Occasionally a waiter with his tray and clean white apron sauntered up and doun the aisle.  Directly in front of them was the great iron curtain of the stage, painted with all manner of advertisements.  From behind this came a noise of hammering and of occasional loud voices.