“Bah! Monsieur Coupeau,” said she after a minute or two, “a little glass of brandy isn’t bad. It sets me going. Besides, the sooner you’re merry, the jollier it is. Oh! I don’t make any mistake; I know that I shan’t make old bones.”
“What a nuisance you are with your funeral ideas!” interrupted Madame Putois who did not like hearing people talk of anything sad.
Coupeau had arisen and was becoming angry thinking that he had been accused of drinking brandy. He swore on his own head and on the heads of his wife and child that there was not a drop of brandy in his veins. And he went up to Clemence and blew in her face so that she might smell his breath. Then he began to giggle because her bare shoulders were right under his nose. He thought maybe he could see more. Clemence, having folded over the back of the shirt and ironed it on both sides, was now working on the cuffs and collar. However, as he was shoving against her, he caused her to make a wrinkle, obliging her to reach for the brush soaking in the soup plate to smooth it out.
“Madame,” said she, “do make him leave off bothering me.”
“Leave her alone; it’s stupid of you to go on like that,” quietly observed Gervaise. “We’re in a hurry, do you hear?”
They were in a hurry, well! What? It was not his fault. He was doing no harm. He was not touching, he was only looking. Was it no longer allowed to look at the beautiful things that God had made? All the same, she had precious fine arms, that artful Clemence! She might exhibit herself for two sous and nobody would have to regret his money. The girl allowed him to go on, laughing at these coarse compliments of a drunken man. And she soon commenced joking with him. He chuffed her about the shirts. So she was always doing shirts? Why yes, she practically lived in them. Mon Dieu! She knew them pretty well. Hundreds and hundreds of them had passed through her hands. Just about every man in the neighborhood was wearing her handiwork on his body. Her shoulders were shaking with laughter through all this, but she managed to continue ironing.
“That’s the banter!” said she, laughing harder than ever.
That squint-eyed Augustine almost burst, the joke seemed to her so funny. The others bullied her. There was a brat for you who laughed at words she ought not to understand! Clemence handed her her iron; the apprentice finished up the irons on the stockings and the dish-cloths when they were not hot enough for the starched things. But she took hold of this one so clumsily that she made herself a cuff in the form of a long burn on the wrist. And she sobbed and accused Clemence of having burnt her on purpose. The latter who had gone to fetch a very hot iron for the shirt-front consoled her at once by threatening to iron her two ears if she did not leave off. Then she placed a piece of flannel under the front and slowly passed the iron over it giving the starch time to show up and dry. The shirt-front became as stiff and as shiny as cardboard.
“By golly!” swore Coupeau, who was treading behind her with the obstinacy of a drunkard.
He raised himself up with a shrill laugh that resembled a pulley in want of grease. Clemence, leaning heavily over the ironing-table, her wrists bent in, her elbows sticking out and wide apart was bending her neck in a last effort; and all her muscles swelled, her shoulders rose with the slow play of the muscles beating beneath the soft skin, her breasts heaved, wet with perspiration in the rosy shadow of the half open chemise. Then Coupeau thrust out his hands, trying to touch her bare flesh.