right on talking, gossiping about other people they
had known.

Gervaise shook herself and got to her feet. Couldn't earn money by
sitting all day. She was the first to return to the ironing, but found
that her curtains had been spotted by the coffee and she had to rub out
the stains with a damp cloth. The other women were now stretching and
getting ready to begin ironing.

Clemence had a terrible attack of coughing as soon as she moved. Finally
she was able to return to the shirt she had been doing. Madame Putois
began to work on the petticoat again.

"Well, good-bye," said Virginie. "I only came out for a quarter-pound of
Swiss cheese. Poisson must think I've frozen to death on the way."

She had only just stepped outside when she turned back to say that
Augustine was at the end of the street, sliding on the ice with some
urchins. The squint-eyed imp rushed in all red-faced and out of breath
with snow all in her hair. She didn't mind the scolding she received,
merely saying that she hadn't been able to walk fast because of the ice
and then some brats threw snow at her.

The afternoons were all the same these winter days. The laundry was the
refuge for anyone in the neighborhood who was cold. There was an endless
procession of gossiping women. Gervaise took pride in the comforting
warmth of her shop and welcomed those who came in, "holding a salon," as
the Lorilleuxs and the Boches remarked meanly.

Gervaise was always thoughtful and generous. Sometimes she even invited
poor people in if she saw them shivering outside. A friendship sprang up
with an elderly house-painter who was seventy. He lived in an attic room
and was slowly dying of cold and hunger. His three sons had been killed
in the war. He survived the best he could, but it had been two years
since he had been able to hold a paint-brush in his hand. Whenever
Gervaise saw Pere Bru walking outside, she would call him in and arrange
a place for him close to the stove. Often she gave him some bread and
cheese. Pere Bru's face was as wrinkled as a withered apple. He would
sit there, with his stooping shoulders and his white beard, without
saying a word, just listening to the coke sputtering in the stove. Maybe
he was thinking of his fifty years of hard work on high ladders, his
fifty years spent painting doors and whitewashing ceilings in every
corner of Paris.

"Well, Pere Bru," Gervaise would say, "what are you thinking of now?"

"Nothing much. All sort