nothing more. She was her mother all over again, with big eyes like
hers. Certainly there were no eyes like that in the Coupeau family.

Coupeau, however, had failed to reappear. One could hear him in the
kitchen struggling with the grate and the coffee-pot. Gervaise was
worrying herself frightfully; it was not the proper thing for a man to
make coffee; and she called and told him what to do, without listening
to the midwife's energetic "hush!"

"Here we are!" said Coupeau, entering with the coffee-pot in his hand.
"Didn't I just have a bother with it! It all went wrong on purpose! Now
we'll drink out of glasses, won't we? Because you know, the cups are
still at the shop."

They seated themselves around the table, and the zinc-worker insisted
on pouring out the coffee himself. It smelt very strong, it was none
of that weak stuff. When the midwife had sipped hers up, she went off;
everything was going on nicely, she was not required. If the young woman
did not pass a good night they were to send for her on the morrow. She
was scarcely down the staircase, when Madame Lorilleux called her a
glutton and a good-for-nothing. She put four lumps of sugar in her
coffee, and charged fifteen francs for leaving you with your baby all
by yourself. But Coupeau took her part; he would willingly fork out
the fifteen francs. After all those sort of women spent their youth in
studying, they were right to charge a good price.

It was then Lorilleux who got into a quarrel with Madame Lerat by
maintaining that, in order to have a son, the head of the bed should
be turned to the north. She shrugged her shoulders at such nonsense,
offering another formula which consisted in hiding under the mattress,