“Here you are!  It’s lucky!” said Mme Lerat, pursing up her lips, for she was still vexed at Mme Maloir’s “five hundred.”  “You may flatter yourself at the way you keep folks waiting.”

“Madame isn’t reasonable; indeed, she isn’t!” added Zoe.

Nana was already harassed, and these reproaches exasperated her.  Was that the way people received her after the worry she had gone through?

“Will you blooming well leave me alone, eh?” she cried.

“Hush, ma’am, there are people in there,” said the maid.

Then in lower tones the young Woman stuttered breathlessly: 

“D’you suppose I’ve been having a good time?  Why, there was no end to it.  I should have liked to see you there!  I was boiling with rage!  I felt inclined to smack somebody.  And never a cab to come home in!  Luckily it’s only a step from here, but never mind that; I did just run home.”

“You have the money?” asked the aunt.

“Dear, dear!  That question!” rejoined Nana.

She had sat herself down on a chair close up against the stove, for her legs had failed her after so much running, and without stopping to take breath she drew from behind her stays an envelope in which there were four hundred-franc notes.  They were visible through a large rent she had torn with savage fingers in order to be sure of the contents.  The three women round about her stared fixedly at the envelope, a big, crumpled, dirty receptacle, as it lay clasped in her small gloved hands.

It was too late now—­Mme Lerat would not go to Rambouillet till tomorrow, and Nana entered into long explanations.

“There’s company waiting for you,” the lady’s maid repeated.

But Nana grew excited again.  The company might wait:  she’d go to them all in good time when she’d finished.  And as her aunt began putting her hand out for the money: 

“Ah no!  Not all of it,” she said.  “Three hundred francs for the nurse, fifty for your journey and expenses, that’s three hundred and fifty.  Fifty francs I keep.”

The big difficulty was how to find change.  There were not ten francs in the house.  But they did not even address themselves to Mme Maloir who, never having more than a six-sou omnibus fair upon her, was listening in quite a disinterested manner.  At length Zoe went out of the room, remarking that she would go and look in her box, and she brought back a hundred francs in hundred-sou pieces.  They were counted out on a corner of the table, and Mme Lerat took her departure at once after having promised to bring Louiset back with her the following day.

“You say there’s company there?” continued Nana, still sitting on the chair and resting herself.

“Yes, madame, three people.”

And Zoe mentioned the banker first.  Nana made a face.  Did that man Steiner think she was going to let herself be bored because he had thrown her a bouquet yesterday evening?