They all hobnobbed and rotted together, just the story of the baskets of apples when there are rotten ones among them.

They maintained a certain propriety in public, but the smut flowed freely when they got to whispering together in a corner.
For inexperienced girls like Nana, there was an undesirable atmosphere around the workshop, an air of cheap dance halls and unorthodox evenings brought in by some of the girls.

The laziness of mornings after a gay night, the shadows under the eyes, the lounging, the hoarse voices, all spread an odor of dark perversion over the work-table which contrasted sharply with the brilliant fragility of the artificial flowers.

Nana eagerly drank it all in and was dizzy with joy when she found herself beside a girl who had been around.

She always wanted to sit next to big Lisa, who was said to be pregnant, and she kept glancing curiously at her neighbor as though expecting her to swell up suddenly.
"It's hot enough to make one stifle," Nana said, approaching a window as if to draw the blind farther down; but she leant forward and again looked out both to the right and left.
At the same moment Leonie, who was watching a man stationed at the foot of the pavement over the way, exclaimed, "What's that old fellow about?
He's been spying here for the last quarter of an hour." "Some tom cat," said Madame Lerat.