three o'clock in the afternoon in winter
It was a source of constant anxiety lest her little apprentice should fill it too full of coal and so injure it . Behind the shop was her bedroom and her kitchen , from which a door opened into the court . Nana 's bed stood in a little room at the right , and Etienne was compelled to share his with the baskets of soiled clothes . It was all very well , except that the place was very damp and that it was dark by three o'clock in the afternoon in winter . The new shop created a great excitement in the neighborhood . Some people declared that the Coupeaus were on the road to ruin ; they had , in fact , spent the whole five hundred francs and were penniless , contrary to their intentions . The morning that Gervaise first took down her shutters she had only six francs in the world , but she was not troubled , and at the end of a week she told her husband after two hours of abstruse calculations that they had taken in enough to cover their expenses .