Miss Baker felt instinctively the exact moment when Old Grannis took down his little binding apparatus from the second shelf of his clothes closet and began his favorite occupation of binding pamphlets--pamphlets that he never read, for all that.
In his "Parlors" McTeague began his week's work.

He glanced in the glass saucer in which he kept his sponge-gold, and noticing that he had used up all his pellets, set about making some more.

In examining Miss Baker's teeth at the preliminary sitting he had found a cavity in one of the incisors.

Miss Baker had decided to have it filled with gold.
McTeague remembered now that it was what is called a "proximate case," where there is not sufficient room to fill with large pieces of gold.

He told himself that he should have to use "mats" in the filling.