She worked steadily all the morning.
At noon she lunched, warming over the coffee left from breakfast, and
frying a couple of sausages. By one she was bending over her table
again. Her fingers--some of them lacerated by McTeague's teeth--flew,
and the little pile of cheap toys in the basket at her elbow grew
steadily.
"Where DO all the toys go to?" she murmured. "The thousands and
thousands of these Noah's arks that I have made--horses and chickens and
elephants--and always there never seems to be enough. It's a good thing
for me that children break their things, and that they all have to have
birthdays and Christmases." She dipped her brush into a pot of Vandyke
brown and painted one of the whittled toy horses in two strokes. Then a
touch of ivory black with a small flat brush created the tail and mane,
and dots of Chinese white made the eyes. The turpentine in the paint
dried it almost immediately, and she tossed the completed little horse
into the basket.
At six o'clock the dentist had not returned. Trina waited until seven,
and then put her work away, and ate her supper alone.
"I wonder what's keeping Mac," she exclaimed as the clock from the
power-house on Sutter Street struck half-past seven.
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