d the bundle under mother
Coupeau's apron, telling her to keep it very flat against her stomach,
on account of the neighbors who had no need to know; and she went and
watched at the door to see that the old woman was not followed. But the
latter had only gone as far as the charcoal dealer's when she called her
back.

"Mamma! Mamma!"

She made her return to the shop, and taking her wedding-ring off her
finger said:

"Here, put this with it. We shall get all the more."

When mother Coupeau brought her twenty-five francs, she danced for joy.
She would order an extra six bottles of wine, sealed wine to drink with
the roast. The Lorilleuxs would be crushed.

For a fortnight past it had been the Coupeaus' dream to crush the
Lorilleuxs. Was it not true that those sly ones, the man and his wife, a
truly pretty couple, shut themselves up whenever they had anything nice
to eat as though they had stolen it? Yes, they covered up the window
with a blanket to hide the light and make believe that they were already
asleep in bed. This stopped anyone from coming up, and so the Lorilleuxs
could stuff everything down, just the two of them. They were even
careful the next day not to throw the bones into the garbage so that no
one would know what they had eaten. Madame Lorilleux would walk to
the end of the street to toss them into a sewer opening. One morning
Gervaise surprised her emptying a basket of oyster shells there.
Oh, those penny-pinchers were never open-handed, and all their mean
contrivances came from their desire to appear to be poor. Well, we'd
show them, we'd prove to them what we weren't mean.

Gervaise would have laid her table in the street, had she been able to,
just for the sake of inviting each passer-by. Money was not invented
that it should be allowed to grow moldy, was it? It is pretty when it
shines all new in the sunshine. She resembled them so little now, that
on the days when she had twenty sous she arranged things to let people
think that she had forty.

Mother Coupeau and Gervaise talked of the Lorilleuxs whilst they laid
the cloth about three o'clock. They had hung some big curtains at the
windows; but as it was very warm the door was left open and the whole
street passed in front of the little table. The two women did not place
a decanter, or a bottle, or a salt-cellar, without trying to arrange
them in such a way as to annoy the Lorilleuxs. They had arranged their
seats so as to give them a full vie