Their clothes were plastered to their bodies and they looked shrunken.

Water was dripping everywhere as from umbrellas in a rainstorm.
"They look jolly funny!" said the hoarse voice of one of the women.
Everyone in the wash-house was highly amused.

A good space was left to the combatants, as nobody cared to get splashed.

Applause and jokes circulated in the midst of the sluice-like noise of the buckets emptied in rapid succession! On the floor the puddles were running one into another, and the two women were wading in them up to their ankles.
Virginie, however, who had been meditating a treacherous move, suddenly seized hold of a pail of lye, which one of her neighbors had left there and threw it.

The same cry arose from all.