By degrees the
flat quieted down again. Trina and McTeague returned to their rooms.
"I guess I'll go back now," said Maria. "He's all right now. I ain't
afraid of him so long as he ain't got his knife."
"Well, say," Marcus called to her as she went down stairs, "if he gets
funny again, you just yell out; I'LL hear you. I won't let him hurt
you."
Marcus went into his room again and resumed his wrangle with the
refractory boots. His eye fell on Zerkow's knife, a long, keen-bladed
hunting-knife, with a buckhorn handle. "I'll take you along with me," he
exclaimed, suddenly. "I'll just need you where I'm going."
Meanwhile, old Miss Baker was making tea to calm her nerves after the
excitement of Maria's incursion. This evening she went so far as to
make tea for two, laying an extra place on the other side of her little
tea-table, setting out a cup and saucer and one of the Gorham silver
spoons. Close upon the other side of the partition Old Grannis bound
uncut numbers of the "Nation."
"Do you know what I think, Mac?" said Trina, when the couple had
returned to their rooms. "I think Marcus is going away."
"What? What?" muttered the dentist, very sleepy and stupid, "what you
saying? What's that about Marcus?"
"I believe Marcus has been packing up, the last two or three days.
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