ther woman on the sixth floor had seven of them. This
hoard that only got their faces washed when it rained were in all shapes
and sizes, fat, thin, big and barely out of the cradle.

Nana reigned supreme over this host of urchins; she ordered about girls
twice her own size, and only deigned to relinquish a little of her power
in favor of Pauline and Victor, intimate confidants who enforced her
commands. This precious chit was for ever wanting to play at being
mamma, undressing the smallest ones to dress them again, insisting on
examining the others all over, messing them about and exercising the
capricious despotism of a grown-up person with a vicious disposition.
Under her leadership they got up tricks for which they should have been
well spanked. The troop paddled in the colored water from the dyer's and
emerged from it with legs stained blue or red as high as the knees; then
off it flew to the locksmith's where it purloined nails and filings and
started off again to alight in the midst of the carpenter's shavings,
enormous heaps of shavings, which delighted it immensely and in which it
rolled head over heels exposing their behinds.

The courtyard was her kingdom. It echoed with the clatter of little
shoes as they stampeded back and forth with piercing cries. On some days
the courtyard was too small for them and the troop would dash down into
the cellar, race up a staircase, run along a corridor, then dash up
another staircase and follow another corridor for hours. They never got
tired of their yelling and clambering.

"Aren't they abominable, those little toads?" cried Madame Boche.
"Really, people can have but very little to do to have time get so many
brats. And yet they complain of having no bread."

Boche said that children pushed up out of poverty like mushrooms out
of manure. All day long his wife was screaming at them and chasing them
with her broom. Finally she had to lock the door of the cellar when
she learned from Pauline that Nana was playing doctor down there in the
dark, viciously finding pleasure in applying remedies to the others by
beating them with sticks.

Well, one afternoon there was a frightful scene. It was bound to have
come sooner or later. Nana had thought of a very funny little game.
She had stolen one of Madame Boche's wooden shoes from outside the
concierge's room. She tied a string to it and began dragging it about
like a cart. Victor on his side had had the idea to fill it with pot