The sale of their furniture had, after paying the rent and outstanding
bills, netted about a hundred and thirty dollars. Trina believed that
the auctioneer from the second-hand store had swindled and cheated
them and had made a great outcry to no effect. But she had arranged the
affair with the auctioneer herself, and offset her disappointment in the
matter of the sale by deceiving her husband as to the real amount of
the returns. It was easy to lie to McTeague, who took everything for
granted; and since the occasion of her trickery with the money that was
to have been sent to her mother, Trina had found falsehood easier than
ever.
"Seventy dollars is all the auctioneer gave me," she told her husband;
"and after paying the balance due on the rent, and the grocer's bill,
there's only fifty left."
"Only fifty?" murmured McTeague, wagging his head, "only fifty? Think of
that."
"Only fifty," declared Trina. Afterwards she said to herself with a
certain admiration for her cleverness:
"Couldn't save sixty dollars much easier than that," and she had added
the hundred and thirty to the little hoard in the chamois-skin bag and
brass match-box in the bottom of her trunk.
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