"Huh? What? What is it?" exclaimed McTeague, suddenly rousing up from
the lounge. Often Maria did very well in the "Dental Parlors." McTeague
was continually breaking things which he was too stupid to have mended;
for him anything that was broken was lost. Now it was a cuspidor, now a
fire-shovel for the little stove, now a China shaving mug.

"Got any junk?"

"I don't know--I don't remember," muttered McTeague. Maria roamed about
the room, McTeague following her in his huge stockinged feet. All at
once she pounced upon a sheaf of old hand instruments in a coverless
cigar-box, pluggers, hard bits, and excavators. Maria had long coveted
such a find in McTeague's "Parlor," knowing it should be somewhere
about. The instruments were of the finest tempered steel and really
valuable.

"Say, Doctor, I can have these, can't I?" exclaimed Maria. "You got no
more use for them." McTeague was not at all sure of this. There were
many in the sheaf that might be repaired, reshaped.

"No, no," he said, wagging his head. But Maria Macapa, knowing with
whom she had to deal, at once let loose a torrent of words. She made
the dentist believe that he had no right to withhold them, that he had
promised to save them for her. She affected a great indignation, pursing
her lips and putting her chin in the air as though wounded in some finer
sense, changing so rapidly from one mood to another, filling the room
with such shrill clamor, that McTeague was dazed and benumbed.

"Yes, all right, all right," he said, trying to make himself heard. "It