He would sit apart in his "Parlors," turning the notice about in his enormous clumsy fingers, reading it stupidly over and over again.

He couldn't understand.

What had a clerk at the City Hall to do with him?
Why couldn't they let him alone?
"Oh, what's to become of us NOW ?" wailed Trina.

"What's to become of us now?
We're paupers, beggars--and all so sudden." And once, in a quick, inexplicable fury, totally unlike anything that McTeague had noticed in her before, she had started up, with fists and teeth shut tight, and had cried, "Oh, if you'd only KILLED Marcus Schouler that time he fought you!" McTeague had continued his work, acting from sheer force of habit; his sluggish, deliberate nature, methodical, obstinate, refusing to adapt itself to the new conditions.
"Maybe Marcus was only trying to scare us," Trina had said.

"How are they going to know whether you're practising or not ?" "I got a mould to make to-morrow," McTeague said, "and Vanovitch, that plumber round on Sutter Street, he's coming again at three." "Well, you go right ahead," Trina told him, decisively; "you go right ahead and make the mould, and pull every tooth in Vanovitch's head if you want to.