du Caire, and it was enough, for these young hussies have the legs
of racehorses. Sometimes she arrived exactly on time but so breathless
and flushed that she must have covered most of the distance at a run
after dawdling along the way. More often she was a few minutes late.
Then she would fawn on her aunt all day, hoping to soften her and keep
her from telling. Madame Lerat understood what it was to be young and
would lie to the Coupeaus, but she also lectured Nana, stressing the
dangers a young girl runs on the streets of Paris. _Mon Dieu!_ she
herself was followed often enough!

"Oh! I watch, you needn't fear," said the widow to the Coupeaus. "I
will answer to you for her as I would for myself. And rather than let a
blackguard squeeze her, why I'd step between them."

The workroom at Titreville's was a large apartment on the first floor,
with a broad work-table standing on trestles in the centre. Round the
four walls, the plaster of which was visible in parts where the dirty
yellowish-grey paper was torn away, there were several stands covered
with old cardboard boxes, parcels and discarded patterns under a thick
coating of dust. The gas had left what appeared to be like a daub of
soot on the ceiling. The two windows opened so wide that without leaving
the work-table the girls could see the people walking past on the
pavement over the way.

Madame Lerat arrived the first, in view of setting an example. Then for
a quarter of an hour the door swayed to and fro, and all the workgirls
scrambled in, perspiring with tumbled hair. One July morning Nana
arrived the last, as very often happened. "Ah, me!" she said, "it won't
be a pity when I have a carriage of my own." And without even taking
off her hat, one which she was weary of patching up, she approached the
window and leant out, looking to the right and the left to see what was
going on in the street.

"What are you looking at?" asked Madame Lerat, suspiciously. "Did your
father come with you?"

"No, you may be sure of that," answered Nana coolly. "I'm looking at
nothing--I'm seeing how hot it is. It's enough to make anyone, having to
run like that."

It was a stifling hot morning. The workgirls had drawn down the Venetian
blinds, between which they could spy out into the street; and they had
at last begun working on either side of the table, at the upper end of
which sat Madame Lerat. They were eight in number, each with her pot
of glue, pincers, tools and curli