If you want
to buy it, it's eleven dollars."
The dentist had been paid off the day before and had four dollars in his
wallet at the moment. He gave the money to the clerk.
"Here, there's part of the money. You--you put that concertina aside
for me, an' I'll give you the rest in a week or so--I'll give it to you
tomorrow," he exclaimed, struck with a sudden idea.
McTeague had sadly missed his concertina. Sunday afternoons when there
was no work to be done, he was accustomed to lie flat on his back on his
springless bed in the little room in the rear of the music store,
his coat and shoes off, reading the paper, drinking steam beer from
a pitcher, and smoking his pipe. But he could no longer play his six
lugubrious airs upon his concertina, and it was a deprivation. He often
wondered where it was gone. It had been lost, no doubt, in the general
wreck of his fortunes. Once, even, the dentist had taken a concertina
from the lot kept by the music store. It was a Sunday and no one was
about. But he found he could not play upon it. The stops were arranged
upon a system he did not understand.
Now his own concertina was come back to him. He would buy it back.
He had given the clerk four dollars.
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