Ain't it, now?
Huh?
Ain't it?
Y'ought t'have seen." McTeague had a vague idea that Marcus Schouler was stuck on his cousin Trina.

They "kept company" a good deal; Marcus took dinner with the Sieppes every Saturday evening at their home at B Street station, across the bay, and Sunday afternoons he and the family usually made little excursions into the suburbs.

McTeague began to wonder dimly how it was that on this occasion Marcus had not gone home with his cousin.

As sometimes happens, Marcus furnished the explanation upon the instant.
"I promised a duck up here on the avenue I'd call for his dog at four this afternoon." Marcus was Old Grannis's assistant in a little dog hospital that the latter had opened in a sort of alley just off Polk Street, some four blocks above Old Grannis lived in one of the back rooms of McTeague's flat.

He was an Englishman and an expert dog surgeon, but Marcus Schouler was a bungler in the profession.