It seemed to persist in declining to pass through the strainer.

Mother Coupeau tapped against the pot with a tea-spoon; and one could hear the drops falling slowly, one by one, and without hurrying themselves any the more.
"Leave it alone," said tall Clemence; "you'll make it thick.

To-day there'll be as much to eat as to drink." Tall Clemence was working on a man's shirt, the plaits of which she separated with her finger-nail.

She had caught a cold, her eyes were frightfully swollen and her chest was shaken with fits of coughing, which doubled her up beside the work-table.

With all that she had not even a handkerchief round her neck and she was dressed in some cheap flimsy woolen stuff in which she shivered.