You must be good, never run about the streets, and grow up sensible like your papa and mamma." Gervaise looked at her daughter very seriously, with wide open eyes, slowly overshadowed with sadness, for she would rather have had a boy.
Boys can talk care of themselves and don't have to run such risks on the streets of Paris as girls do.

The midwife took the infant from Coupeau.
She forbade Gervaise to do any talking; it was bad enough there was so much noise around her.
Then the zinc-worker said that he must tell the news to mother Coupeau and the Lorilleuxs, but he was dying with hunger, he must first of all have his dinner.

It was a great worry to the invalid to see him have to wait on himself, run to the kitchen for the stew, eat it out of a soup plate, and not be able to find the bread.

In spite of being told not to do so, she bewailed her condition, and fidgeted about in her bed.

It was stupid of her not to have managed to set the cloth, the pains had laid her on her back like a blow from a bludgeon.