"I haven't a cent. There's not a — oh, MAC, will you stop? I won't have you pinch me that way."
"Hurry up," answered her husband, calmly, nipping the flesh of her shoulder between his thumb and finger. "Heise's waiting for me." Trina wrenched from him with a sharp intake of breath, frowning with pain, and caressing her shoulder.
"Mac, you've no idea how that hurts. Mac, STOP!"
"Give me some money, then."
In the end Trina had to comply. She gave him half a dollar from her dress pocket, protesting that it was the only piece of money she had.
"One more, just for luck," said McTeague, pinching her again; "and another."
"How can you — how CAN you hurt a woman so!" exclaimed Trina, beginning to cry with the pain.
"Ah, now, CRY," retorted the dentist. "That's right, CRY. I never saw such a little fool." He went out, slamming the door in disgust.
But McTeague never became a drunkard in the generally received sense of the term. He did not drink to excess more than two or three times in a month, and never upon any occasion did he become maudlin or staggering. Perhaps his nerves were naturally too dull to admit of any excitation; perhaps he did not really care for the whiskey, and only drank because Heise and the other men at Frenna's did. Trina could often reproach him with drinking too much; she never could say that he was drunk. The alcohol had its effect for all that. It roused the man, or rather the brute in the man, and now not only roused it, but goaded it to evil. McTeague's nature changed. It was not only the alcohol, it was idleness and a general throwing off of the good influence his wife had had over him in the days of their prosperity. McTeague disliked Trina. She was a perpetual irritation to him. She annoyed him because she was so small, so prettily made, so invariably correct and precise. Her avarice incessantly harassed him. Her industry was a constant reproach to him. She seemed to flaunt her work defiantly in his face. It was the red flag in the eyes of the bull. One time when he had just come back from Frenna's and had been sitting in the chair near her, silently watching her at her work, he exclaimed all of a sudden:
"Stop working. Stop it, I tell you. Put 'em away. Put 'em all away, or I'll pinch you."