"Look! There comes big Virginie! She is actually coming here to wash her rags tied up in a handkerchief." Gervaise looked up quickly. Virginie was a woman about her own age, larger and taller than herself, a brunette and pretty in spite of the elongated oval of her face. She wore an old black dress with flounces and a red ribbon at her throat. Her hair was carefully arranged and massed in a blue chenille net. She hesitated a moment in the center aisle and half shut her eyes, as if looking for something or somebody, but when she distinguished Gervaise she went toward her with a haughty, insolent air and supercilious smile and finally established herself only a short distance from her. "That is a new notion!" muttered Mme Boche in a low voice. "She was never known before to rub out even a pair of cuffs. She is a lazy creature, I do assure you. She never sews the buttons on her boots. She is just like her sister, that minx of an Adele, who stays away from the shop two days out of three. What is she rubbing now? A skirt, is it? It is dirty enough, I am sure!" It was clear that Mme Boche wished to please Gervaise. The truth was she often took coffee with Adele and Virginie when the two sisters were in funds. Gervaise did not reply but worked faster than before. She was now preparing her bluing water in a small tub standing on three legs. She dipped in her pieces, shook them about in the colored water, which was almost a lake in hue, and then, wringing them, she shook them out and threw them lightly over the high wooden bars. While she did this she kept her back well turned on big Virginie. But she felt that the girl was looking at her, and she heard an occasional derisive sniff. Virginie, in fact, seemed to have come there to provoke her, and when Gervaise turned around the two women fixed their eyes on each other. "Let her be," murmured Mme Boche. "She is not the one, now I tell you!" At this moment, as Gervaise was shaking her last piece of linen, she heard laughing and talking at the door of the lavatory. "Two children are here asking for their mother!" cried Charles. All the women looked around, and Gervaise recognized Claude and Etienne. As soon as they saw her they ran toward her, splashing through the puddle's, their untied shoes half off and Claude, the eldest, dragging his little brother by the hand. The women as they passed uttered kindly exclamations of pity, for the children were evidently frightened. They clutched their mother's skirts and buried their pretty blond heads. "Did Papa send you?" asked Gervaise. But as she stooped to tie Etienne's shoes she saw on Claude's finger the key of her room with its copper tag and number. "Did you bring the key?" she exclaimed in great surprise. "And why, pray?" The child looked down on the key hanging on his finger, which he had apparently forgotten. This seemed to remind him of something, and he said in a clear, shrill voice: "Papa is gone!"