er. Just listen;
wouldn't that make a fight if the two got together? Have to try it some
day."

CHAPTER 5

Wednesday morning, Washington's Birthday, McTeague rose very early and
shaved himself. Besides the six mournful concertina airs, the dentist
knew one song. Whenever he shaved, he sung this song; never at any other
time. His voice was a bellowing roar, enough to make the window sashes
rattle. Just now he woke up all the lodgers in his hall with it. It was
a lamentable wail:

"No one to love, none to caress,
Left all alone in this world's wilderness."

As he paused to strop his razor, Marcus came into his room,
half-dressed, a startling phantom in red flannels.

Marcus often ran back and forth between his room and the dentist's
"Parlors" in all sorts of undress. Old Miss Baker had seen him thus
several times through her half-open door, as she sat in her room
listening and waiting. The old dressmaker was shocked out of all
expression. She was outraged, offended, pursing her lips, putting up her
head. She talked of complaining to the landlady. "And Mr. Grannis right
next door, too. You can understand how trying it is for both of us." She
would come out in the hall after one of these apparitions, her little
false curls shaking, talking loud and shrill to any one in reach of her
voice.

"Well," Marcus would shout, "shut your door, then, if you don't want to
see. Look out, now, here I come again. Not even a porous plaster on me
this time."

On this Wednesday morning Marcus called McTeague out into the hall, to
the head of the stairs that led down to the street door.

"Come and listen to Maria, Mac," said he.

Maria sat on the next to the lowest step, her chin propped by her
two fists. The red-headed Polish Jew, the ragman Zerkow, stood in the
doorway. He was talking eagerly.

"Now, just once more, Maria," he was saying. "Tell it to us just once
more." Maria's voice came up the stairway in a monotone. Marcus and
McTeague caught a phrase from time to time.

"There were more than a hundred pieces, and every one of them gold--just
that punch-bowl was worth a fortune-thick, fat, red gold."

"Get onto to that, will you?" observed Marcus. "The old skin has got her
started on the plate. Ain't they a pair for you?"

"And it rang like bells, didn't it?" prompted Zerkow.

"Sweeter'n church bells, and clearer."

"Ah, sweeter'n bells. Wasn't that punch-bowl awful heavy?"

"All you could do to lift