This woman was French, and was known to the flat as Augustine, no one taking enough interest in her to inquire for her last name; all that was known of her was that she was a decayed French laundress, miserably poor, her trade long since ruined by Chinese competition.  Augustine cooked well, but she was otherwise undesirable, and Trina lost patience with her at every moment.  The old French woman’s most marked characteristic was her timidity.  Trina could scarcely address her a simple direction without Augustine quailing and shrinking; a reproof, however gentle, threw her into an agony of confusion; while Trina’s anger promptly reduced her to a state of nervous collapse, wherein she lost all power of speech, while her head began to bob and nod with an incontrollable twitching of the muscles, much like the oscillations of the head of a toy donkey.  Her timidity was exasperating, her very presence in the room unstrung the nerves, while her morbid eagerness to avoid offence only served to develop in her a clumsiness that was at times beyond belief.  More than once Trina had decided that she could no longer put up with Augustine but each time she had retained her as she reflected upon her admirably cooked cabbage soups and tapioca puddings, and—­which in Trina’s eyes was her chiefest recommendation—­the pittance for which she was contented to work.

Augustine had a husband.  He was a spirit-medium—­a “professor.”  At times he held seances in the larger rooms of the flat, playing vigorously upon a mouth-organ and invoking a familiar whom he called “Edna,” and whom he asserted was an Indian maiden.

The evening was a period of relaxation for Trina and McTeague.  They had supper at six, after which McTeague smoked his pipe and read the papers for half an hour, while Trina and Augustine cleared away the table and washed the dishes.  Then, as often as not, they went out together.  One of their amusements was to go “down town” after dark and promenade Market and Kearney Streets.  It was very gay; a great many others were promenading there also.  All of the stores were brilliantly lighted and many of them still open.  They walked about aimlessly, looking into the shop windows.  Trina would take McTeague’s arm, and he, very much embarrassed at that, would thrust both hands into his pockets and pretend not to notice.  They stopped before the jewellers’ and milliners’ windows, finding a great delight in picking out things for each other, saying how they would choose this and that if they were rich.  Trina did most of the talking.  McTeague merely approving by a growl or a movement of the head or shoulders; she was interested in the displays of some of the cheaper stores, but he found an irresistible charm in an enormous golden molar with four prongs that hung at a corner of Kearney Street.  Sometimes they would look at Mars or at the moon through the street telescopes or sit for a time in the rotunda of a vast department store where a band played every evening.