n't high. Some laundresses charged a sou more for each item.

Gervaise was now calling out the soiled clothes, as she packed them in
her basket, for Madame Goujet to list. Then she lingered on, embarrassed
by a request which she wished to make.

"Madame Goujet," she said at length, "if it does not inconvenience you,
I would like to take the money for the month's washing."

It so happened that that month was a very heavy one, the account they
had made up together amounting to ten francs, seven sous. Madame Goujet
looked at her a moment in a serious manner, then she replied:

"My child, it shall be as you wish. I will not refuse you the money as
you are in need of it. Only it's scarcely the way to pay off your debt;
I say that for your sake, you know. Really now, you should be careful."

Gervaise received the lecture with bowed head and stammering excuses.
The ten francs were to make up the amount of a bill she had given her
coke merchant. But on hearing the word "bill," Madame Goujet became
severer still. She gave herself as an example; she had reduced her
expenditure ever since Goujet's wages had been lowered from twelve to
nine francs a day. When one was wanting in wisdom whilst young, one dies
of hunger in one's old age. But she held back and didn't tell Gervaise
that she gave her their laundry only in order to help her pay off the
debt. Before that she had done all her own washing, and she would have
to do it herself again if the laundry continued taking so much cash out
of her pocket. Gervaise spoke her thanks and left quickly as soon as she
had received the ten francs seven sous. Outside on the landing she was
so relieved she wanted to dance. She was becoming used to the annoying,
unpleasant difficulties caused by a shortage of money and preferred to
remember not the embarrassment but the joy in escaping from them.

It was also on that Saturday that Gervaise met with a rather strange
adventure as she descended the Goujets' staircase. She was obliged to
stand up close against the stair-rail with her basket to make way for
a tall bare-headed woman who was coming up, carrying in her hand a very
fresh mackerel, with bloody gills, in a piece of paper. She recognized
Virginie, the girl whose face she had slapped at the wash-house. They
looked each other full in the face. Gervaise shut her eyes. She thought
for a moment that she was going to be hit in the face with the fish. But
no, Virginie even smiled slightly. Then