oes. Nana could spot Victor
Fauconnier, the laundress's son and they would exchange kisses in dark
corners. It never went farther than that, but they told each other some
tall tales.

Then when the sun set, the great delight of these young hussies was to
stop and look at the mountebanks. Conjurors and strong men turned up and
spread threadbare carpets on the soil of the avenue. Loungers collected
and a circle formed whilst the mountebank in the centre tried his
muscles under his faded tights. Nana and Pauline would stand for hours
in the thickest part of the crowd. Their pretty, fresh frocks would get
crushed between great-coats and dirty work smocks. In this atmosphere of
wine and sweat they would laugh gaily, finding amusement in everything,
blooming naturally like roses growing out of a dunghill. The only thing
that vexed them was to meet their fathers, especially when the hatter
had been drinking. So they watched and warned one another.

"Look, Nana," Pauline would suddenly cry out, "here comes father
Coupeau!"

"Well, he's drunk too. Oh, dear," said Nana, greatly bothered. "I'm
going to beat it, you know. I don't want him to give me a wallop. Hullo!
How he stumbles! Good Lord, if he could only break his neck!"

At other times, when Coupeau came straight up to her without giving her
time to run off, she crouched down, made herself small and muttered:
"Just you hide me, you others. He's looking for me, and he promised he'd
knock my head off if he caught me hanging about."

Then when the drunkard had passed them she drew herself up again, and
all the others followed her with bursts of laughter. He'll find her--he
will--he won't! It was a true game of hide and seek. One day, however,
Boche had come after Pauline and caught her by both ears, and Coupeau
had driven Nana home with kicks.

Nana was now a flower-maker and earned forty sous a day at Titreville's
place in the Rue du Caire, where she had served as apprentice. The
Coupeaus had kept her there so that she might remain under the eye of
Madame Lerat, who had been forewoman in the workroom for ten years. Of
a morning, when her mother looked at the cuckoo clock, off she went by
herself, looking very pretty with her shoulders tightly confined in her
old black dress, which was both too narrow and too short; and Madame
Lerat had to note the hour of her arrival and tell it to Gervaise. She
was allowed twenty minutes to go from the Rue de la Goutte-d'Or to the
Rue