He bungled
it considerably, but in the end he succeeded passably well. He extracted
the loose tooth with his bayonet forceps and prepared the roots of the
broken one as if for filling, fitting into them a flattened piece of
platinum wire to serve as a dowel. But this was only the beginning;
altogether it was a fortnight's work. Trina came nearly every other day,
and passed two, and even three, hours in the chair.
By degrees McTeague's first awkwardness and suspicion vanished entirely.
The two became good friends. McTeague even arrived at that point where
he could work and talk to her at the same time--a thing that had never
before been possible for him.
Never until then had McTeague become so well acquainted with a girl of
Trina's age. The younger women of Polk Street--the shop girls, the
young women of the soda fountains, the waitresses in the cheap
restaurants--preferred another dentist, a young fellow just graduated
from the college, a poser, a rider of bicycles, a man about town, who
wore astonishing waistcoats and bet money on greyhound coursing. Trina
was McTeague's first experience. With her the feminine element suddenly
entered his little world. It was not only her that he saw and felt,
it was the woman, the whole sex, an entire new humanity, strange and
alluring, that he seemed to have discovered.
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