McTeague | Page 8

arm-chair near to the wall, knowing that Miss
Baker was upon the other side, conscious, perhaps, that she was
thinking of him; and there the two would sit through the hours of the
afternoon, listening and waiting, they did not know exactly for what,
but near to each other, separated only by the thin partition of their
rooms. They had come to know each other's habits. Old Grannis knew
that at quarter of five precisely Miss Baker made a cup of tea over the
oil stove on the stand between the bureau and the window. Miss Baker
felt instinctively the exact moment when Old Grannis took down his
little binding apparatus from the second shelf of his clothes closet and
began his favorite occupation of binding pamphlets--pamphlets that he
never read, for all that.
In his "Parlors" McTeague began his week's work. He glanced in the
glass saucer in which he kept his sponge-gold, and noticing that he had
used up all his pellets, set about making some more. In examining Miss
Baker's teeth at the preliminary sitting he had found a cavity in one of
the incisors. Miss Baker had decided to have it filled with gold.
McTeague remembered now that it was what is called a "proximate
case," where there is not sufficient room to fill with large pieces of gold.
He told himself that he should have to use "mats" in the filling. He
made some dozen of these "mats" from his tape of non-cohesive gold,
cutting it transversely into small pieces that could be inserted edgewise
between the teeth and consolidated by packing. After he had made his

"mats" he continued with the other kind of gold fillings, such as he
would have occasion to use during the week; "blocks" to be used in
large proximal cavities, made by folding the tape on itself a number of
times and then shaping it with the soldering pliers; "cylinders" for
commencing fillings, which he formed by rolling the tape around a
needle called a "broach," cutting it afterwards into different lengths. He
worked slowly, mechanically, turning the foil between his fingers with
the manual dexterity that one sometimes sees in stupid persons. His
head was quite empty of all thought, and he did not whistle over his
work as another man might have done. The canary made up for his
silence, trilling and chittering continually, splashing about in its
morning bath, keeping up an incessant noise and movement that would
have been maddening to any one but McTeague, who seemed to have
no nerves at all.
After he had finished his fillings, he made a hook broach from a bit of
piano wire to replace an old one that he had lost. It was time for his
dinner then, and when he returned from the car conductors' coffee-joint,
he found Miss Baker waiting for him.
The ancient little dressmaker was at all times willing to talk of Old
Grannis to anybody that would listen, quite unconscious of the gossip
of the flat. McTeague found her all a-flutter with excitement.
Something extraordinary had happened. She had found out that the
wall-paper in Old Grannis's room was the same as that in hers.
"It has led me to thinking, Doctor McTeague," she exclaimed, shaking
her little false curls at him. "You know my room is so small, anyhow,
and the wall-paper being the same--the pattern from my room continues
right into his--I declare, I believe at one time that was all one room.
Think of it, do you suppose it was? It almost amounts to our occupying
the same room. I don't know--why, really--do you think I should speak
to the landlady about it? He bound pamphlets last night until half-past
nine. They say that he's the younger son of a baronet; that there are
reasons for his not coming to the title; his stepfather wronged him
cruelly."
No one had ever said such a thing. It was preposterous to imagine any

mystery connected with Old Grannis. Miss Baker had chosen to invent
the little fiction, had created the title and the unjust stepfather from
some dim memories of the novels of her girlhood.
She took her place in the operating chair. McTeague began the filling.
There was a long silence. It was impossible for McTeague to work and
talk at the same time.
He was just burnishing the last "mat" in Miss Baker's tooth, when the
door of the "Parlors" opened, jangling the bell which he had hung over
it, and which was absolutely unnecessary. McTeague turned, one foot
on the pedal of his dental engine, the corundum disk whirling between
his fingers.
It was Marcus Schouler who came in, ushering a young girl of about
twenty.
"Hello, Mac," exclaimed Marcus; "busy? Brought my cousin round
about that broken tooth."
McTeague