side of the landing, without an event. Gervaise was able to take care
of her daughter and still work most of the week. She was now a skilled
worker on fine laundry and earned up to three francs a day. She decided
to put Etienne, now nearly eight, into a small boarding-school on Rue
de Chartres for five francs a week. Despite the expenses for the two
children, they were able to save twenty or thirty francs each month.
Once they had six hundred francs saved, Gervaise often lay awake
thinking of her ambitious dream: she wanted to rent a small shop,
hire workers, and go into the laundry business herself. If this effort
worked, they would have a steady income from savings in twenty years.
They could retire and live in the country.

Yet she hesitated, saying she was looking for the right shop. She was
giving herself time to think it over. Their savings were safe in
the bank, and growing larger. So, in three years' time she had only
fulfilled one of her dreams--she had bought a clock. But even this
clock, made of rosewood with twined columns and a pendulum of gilded
brass, was being paid for in installments of twenty-two sous each Monday
for a year. She got upset if Coupeau tried to wind it; she liked to be
the only one to lift off the glass dome. It was under the glass dome,
behind the clock, that she hid her bank book. Sometimes, when she was
dreaming of her shop, she would stare fixedly at the clock, lost in
thought.

The Coupeaus went out nearly every Sunday with the Goujets. They
were pleasant little excursions, sometimes to have some fried fish
at Saint-Ouen, at others a rabbit at Vincennes, in the garden of some
eating-house keeper without any grand display. The men drank sufficient
to quench their thirst, and returned home as right as nine-pins, giving
their arms to the ladies. In the evening before going to bed, the two