f the irons
on the thick blanket covered with calico.

"Ah, well!" said Gervaise, "it's enough to melt one! We might have to
take off our chemises."

She was sitting on the floor, in front of a basin, starching some
things. Her sleeves were rolled up and her camisole was slipping down
her shoulders. Little curls of golden hair stuck were stuck to her
skin by perspiration. She carefully dipped caps, shirt-fronts, entire
petticoats, and the trimmings of women's drawers into the milky water.
Then she rolled the things up and placed them at the bottom of a
square basket, after dipping her hand in a pail and shaking it over the
portions of the shirts and drawers which she had not starched.

"This basketful's for you, Madame Putois," she said. "Look sharp, now!
It dries at once, and will want doing all over again in an hour."

Madame Putois, a thin little woman of forty-five, was ironing. Though
she was buttoned up in an old chestnut-colored dress, there was not a
drop of perspiration to be seen. She had not even taken her cap off, a
black cap trimmed with green ribbons turned partly yellow. And she stood
perfectly upright in front of the ironing-table, which was too high
for her, sticking out her elbows, and moving her iron with the jerky
evolutions of a puppet. On a sudden she exclaimed:

"Ah, no! Mademoiselle Clemence, you mustn't take your camisole off. You
know I don't like such indecencies. Whilst you're about it, you'd better
show everything. There's already three men over the way stopping to
look."

Tall Clemence called her an old beast between her teeth. She was
suffocating; she might certainly make herself comfortable; everyone was
not gifted with a skin as dry as touchwood. Besides no one could see
anything; and she held up her arms, whilst her opulent bosom almost
ripped her chemise, and her shoulders were bursting through the straps.
At the rate she was going, Clemence was not likely to have any marrow
left in her bones long before she was thirty years old. Mornings after
big parties she was unable to feel the ground she trod upon, and fell
asleep over her work, whilst her head and her stomach seemed as though
stuffed full of rags. But she was kept on all the same, for no other
workwoman could iron a shirt with her style. Shirts were her specialty.

"This is mine, isn't it?" she declared, tapping her bosom. "And it
doesn't bite; it hurts nobody!"

"Clemence, put your wrapper on again," said Gervaise. "Ma