ainscot. You know I
was not very well pleased last Saturday. There were some stains left."

And both together, the hatter and the groceress assumed a more important
air, as if they had been on a throne whilst Gervaise dragged herself
through the black mud at their feet. Virginie must have enjoyed herself,
for a yellowish flame darted from her cat's eyes, and she looked at
Lantier with an insidious smile. At last she was revenged for that
hiding she had received at the wash-house, and which she had never
forgotten.

Whenever Gervaise ceased scrubbing, a sound of sawing could be heard
from the back room. Through the open doorway, Poisson's profile stood
out against the pale light of the courtyard. He was off duty that day
and was profiting by his leisure time to indulge in his mania for making
little boxes. He was seated at a table and was cutting out arabesques in
a cigar box with extraordinary care.

"Say, Badingue!" cried Lantier, who had given him this surname again,
out of friendship. "I shall want that box of yours as a present for a
young lady."

Virginie gave him a pinch and he reached under the counter to run his
fingers like a creeping mouse up her leg.

"Quite so," said the policeman. "I was working for you, Auguste, in view
of presenting you with a token of friendship."

"Ah, if that's the case, I'll keep your little memento!" rejoined
Lantier with a laugh. "I'll hang it round my neck with a ribbon."

Then suddenly, as if this thought brought another one to his memory, "By
the way," he cried, "I met Nana last night."

This news caused Gervaise such emotion that she sunk down in the dirty
water which covered the floor of the shop.

"Ah!" she muttered speechlessly.

"Yes; as I was going down the Rue des Martyrs, I caught sight of a
girl who was on the arm of an old fellow in front of me, and I said to
myself: I know that shape. I stepped faster and sure enough found myself
face to face with Nana. There's no need to pity her, she looked very
happy, with her pretty woolen dress on her back, a gold cross and an
awfully pert expression."

"Ah!" repeated Gervaise in a husky voice.

Lantier, who had finished the pastilles, took some barley-sugar out of
another jar.

"She's sneaky," he resumed. "She made a sign to me to follow her,
with wonderful composure. Then she left her old fellow somewhere in a
cafe--oh a wonderful chap, the old bloke, quite used up!--and she came
and joined me under the doorway.