She even denied herself lights and fuel in order to put by a
quarter or so, grudging every penny she was obliged to spend. She did
her own washing and cooking. Finally she sold her wedding dress, that
had hitherto lain in the bottom of her trunk.
The day she moved from Zerkow's old house, she came suddenly upon the
dentist's concertina under a heap of old clothes in the closet. Within
twenty minutes she had sold it to the dealer in second-hand furniture,
returning to her room with seven dollars in her pocket, happy for the
first time since McTeague had left her.
But for all that the match-box and the bag refused to fill up; after
three weeks of the most rigid economy they contained but eighteen
dollars and some small change. What was that compared with four hundred?
Trina told herself that she must have her money in hand. She longed to
see again the heap of it upon her work-table, where she could plunge her
hands into it, her face into it, feeling the cool, smooth metal upon her
cheeks. At such moments she would see in her imagination her wonderful
five thousand dollars piled in columns, shining and gleaming somewhere
at the bottom of Uncle Oelbermann's vault. She would look at the
paper that Uncle Oelbermann had given her, and tell herself that it
represented five thousand dollars.
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