Then, too, the pair had learned to make concessions, little by little, and all unconsciously they adapted their modes of life to suit each other.  Instead of sinking to McTeague’s level as she had feared, Trina found that she could make McTeague rise to hers, and in this saw a solution of many a difficult and gloomy complication.

For one thing, the dentist began to dress a little better, Trina even succeeding in inducing him to wear a high silk hat and a frock coat of a Sunday.  Next he relinquished his Sunday afternoon’s nap and beer in favor of three or four hours spent in the park with her—­the weather permitting.  So that gradually Trina’s misgivings ceased, or when they did assail her, she could at last meet them with a shrug of the shoulders, saying to herself meanwhile, “Well, it’s done now and it can’t be helped; one must make the best of it.”

During the first months of their married life these nervous relapses of hers had alternated with brusque outbursts of affection when her only fear was that her husband’s love did not equal her own.  Without an instant’s warning, she would clasp him about the neck, rubbing her cheek against his, murmuring: 

“Dear old Mac, I love you so, I love you so.  Oh, aren’t we happy together, Mac, just us two and no one else?  You love me as much as I love you, don’t you, Mac?  Oh, if you shouldn’t—­if you shouldn’t.”

But by the middle of the winter Trina’s emotions, oscillating at first from one extreme to another, commenced to settle themselves to an equilibrium of calmness and placid quietude.  Her household duties began more and more to absorb her attention, for she was an admirable housekeeper, keeping the little suite in marvellous good order and regulating the schedule of expenditure with an economy that often bordered on positive niggardliness.  It was a passion with her to save money.  In the bottom of her trunk, in the bedroom, she hid a brass match-safe that answered the purposes of a savings bank.  Each time she added a quarter or a half dollar to the little store she laughed and sang with a veritable childish delight; whereas, if the butcher or milkman compelled her to pay an overcharge she was unhappy for the rest of the day.  She did not save this money for any ulterior purpose, she hoarded instinctively, without knowing why, responding to the dentist’s remonstrances with: 

“Yes, yes, I know I’m a little miser, I know it.”

Trina had always been an economical little body, but it was only since her great winning in the lottery that she had become especially penurious.  No doubt, in her fear lest their great good luck should demoralize them and lead to habits of extravagance, she had recoiled too far in the other direction.  Never, never, never should a penny of that miraculous fortune be spent; rather should it be added to.  It was a nest egg, a monstrous, roc-like nest egg, not so large, however, but that it could be made larger.  Already by the end of that winter Trina had begun to make up the deficit of two hundred dollars that she had been forced to expend on the preparations for her marriage.