Months pass. Though Trina now loves McTeague “with a blind, unreasoning love” (183), she has periods of feeling appalled by “her stupid, brutish husband” (185). Eventually she settles “to an equilibrium of calmness and placid quietude” (187). She is obsessed with saving money, believing not a dollar of her lottery winnings should be spent. She hoards “instinctively” and builds a “nest egg” of savings, which she keeps in her trunk (188).

Though McTeague’s great “passion” for her has waned, he still enjoys Trina, and his “little animal comforts” (190) are tended to. Trina manages to improve McTeague slowly. His dress and manners are more refined, and he reads the newspaper and forms political opinions. McTeague develops “ambitions—very vague, very confused ideas of something better” (191). He imagines a house and children.

They grow happy in their routines and frequently walk about town together. They also stand outside a little house down the street, imagining what it would be like to live there. After they speak with the owner, McTeague tells Trina they can rent it with her savings. Trina lies about how much she has saved. When the owner calls on McTeague one day, McTeague, overwhelmed by the owner’s sales pitch, signs a paper committing him to pay the first month’s rent of $35.