“See, there's where she kept her savings. See, he broke the lock.”
“Well, Mrs. McTeague,” said the doctor, sitting down by the bed, and taking Trina's wrist, “a little fever, eh?”
Trina opened her eyes and looked at him, and then at Miss Baker. She did not seem in the least surprised at the unfamiliar faces. She appeared to consider it all as a matter of course.
“Yes,” she said, with a long, tremulous breath, “I have a fever, and my head—my head aches and aches.”
The doctor prescribed rest and mild opiates. Then his eye fell upon the fingers of Trina's right hand. He looked at them sharply. A deep red glow, unmistakable to a physician's eyes, was upon some of them, extending from the finger tips up to the second knuckle.
“Hello,” he exclaimed, “what's the matter here?” In fact something was very wrong indeed. For days Trina had noticed it. The fingers of her right hand had swollen as never before, aching and discolored. Cruelly lacerated by McTeague's brutality as they were, she had nevertheless gone on about her work on the Noah's ark animals, constantly in contact with the “non-poisonous” paint. She told as much to the doctor in answer to his questions. He shook his head with an exclamation.
“Why, this is blood-poisoning, you know,” he told her; “the worst kind. You'll have to have those fingers amputated, beyond a doubt, or lose the entire hand—or even worse.”
“And my work!” exclaimed Trina.