"Mustn't complain. I am sound all the same. There's more than one at forty-two who are put to the patching."
"Maybe, old man, but that does not give us bread. Where am I to get it from, eh? Have you got nothing?"
"I've got two coppers."
"Keep them for a half-pint. Good Lord! where am I to get it from? Six days! it will never end. We owe sixty francs to Maigrat, who turned me out of doors day before yesterday. That won't prevent me from going to see him again. But if he goes on refusing——"
And Maheude continued in her melancholy voice, without moving her head, only closing her eyes now and then beneath the dim light of the candle. She said the cupboard was empty, the little ones asking for bread and butter, even the coffee was done, and the water caused colic, and the long days passed in deceiving hunger with boiled cabbage leaves. Little by little she had been obliged to raise her voice, for Estelle's screams drowned her words. These cries became unbearable. Maheu seemed all at once to hear them, and, in a fury, snatched the little one up from the cradle and threw it on the mother's bed, stammering with rage:
"Here, take her; I'll do for her! Damn the child! It wants for nothing: it sucks, and it complains louder than all the rest!"
Estelle began, in fact, to suck. Hidden beneath the clothes and soothed by the warmth of the bed, her cries subsided into the greedy little sound of her lips.
"Haven't the Piolaine people told you to go and see them?" asked the father, after a period of silence.
The mother bit her lip with an air of discouraged doubt.
"Yes, they met me; they were carrying clothes for poor children. Yes, I'll take Lénore and Henri to them this morning. If they only give me a few pence!"