de the retired dressmaker.
Neither of them spoke. Old Grannis dared not move, but sat rigid, his
eyes riveted on his empty soup plate.

All at once there was a report like a pistol. The men started in their
places. Mrs. Sieppe uttered a muffled shriek. The waiter from the cheap
restaurant, hired as Maria's assistant, rose from a bending posture, a
champagne bottle frothing in his hand; he was grinning from ear to ear.

"Don't get scairt," he said, reassuringly, "it ain't loaded."

When all their glasses had been filled, Marcus proposed the health of
the bride, "standing up." The guests rose and drank. Hardly one of them
had ever tasted champagne before. The moment's silence after the toast
was broken by McTeague exclaiming with a long breath of satisfaction:
"That's the best beer I ever drank."

There was a roar of laughter. Especially was Marcus tickled over the
dentist's blunder; he went off in a very spasm of mirth, banging the
table with his fist, laughing until his eyes watered. All through the
meal he kept breaking out into cackling imitations of McTeague's words:
"That's the best BEER I ever drank. Oh, Lord, ain't that a break!"

What a wonderful supper that was! There was oyster soup; there were
sea bass and barracuda; there was a gigantic roast goose stuffed with
chestnuts; there were egg-plant and sweet potatoes--Miss Baker called
them "yams." There was calf's head in oil, over which Mr. Sieppe went
into ecstasies; there was lobster salad; there were rice pudding, and
strawberry ice cream, and wine jelly, and stewed prunes, and cocoanuts,
and mixed nuts, and raisins, and fruit, and tea, and coffee, and mineral
waters, and lemonade.

For two hours the guests ate; their faces red, their elbows wide, the
perspiration beading their foreheads. All around the table one saw the
same incessant movement of jaws and heard the same uninterrupted sound
of chewing. Three times Heise passed his plate for more roast goose.
Mr. Sieppe devoured the calf's head with long breaths of contentment;
McTeague ate for the sake of eating, without choice; everything within
reach of his hands found its way into his enormous mouth.

There was but little conversation, and that only of the food; one
exchanged opinions with one's neighbor as to the soup, the egg-plant,
or the stewed prunes. Soon the room became very warm, a faint moisture
appeared upon the windows, the air was heavy with the smell of cooked
food. At every moment Trina