She looked up, keeping Nana behind her skirts, lest the child should call out and startle her father, who was at that moment on the extreme edge. She saw the soldering iron and the tiny flame that rose as he carefully passed it along the edges of the zinc. Gervaise, pale with suspense and fear, raised her hands mechanically with a gesture of supplication. Coupeau ascended the steep roof with a slow step, then glancing down, he beheld his wife. "You are watching me, are you?" he cried gaily. "Ah, Madame Boche, is she not a silly one? She was afraid to speak to me. Wait ten minutes, will you?" The two women stood on the sidewalk, having as much as they could do to restrain Nana, who insisted on fishing in the gutter. The old woman still stood at the window, looking up at the roof and waiting. "Just see her," said Mme Boche. "What is she looking at?" Coupeau was heard lustily singing; with the aid of a pair of compasses he had drawn some lines and now proceeded to cut a large fan; this he adroitly, with his tools, folded into the shape of a pointed mushroom. Zidore was again heating the irons. The sun was setting just behind the house, and the whole western sky was flushed with rose, fading to a soft violet, and against this sky the figures of the two men, immeasurably exaggerated, stood clearly out, as well as the strange form of the zinc which Coupeau was then manipulating. "Zidore! The irons!" But Zidore was not to be seen. His master, with an oath, shouted down the scuttle window which was open near by and finally discovered him two houses off. The boy was taking a walk, apparently, with his scanty blond hair blowing all about his head. "Do you think you are in the country?" cried Coupeau in a fury. "You are another Beranger, perhaps--composing verses! Will you have the kindness to give me my irons? Whoever heard the like? Give me my irons, I say!" The irons hissed as he applied them, and he called to Gervaise: "I am coming!" The chimney to which he had fitted this cap was in the center of the roof. Gervaise stood watching him, soothed by his calm self-possession. Nana clapped her little hands. "Papa! Papa!" she cried. "Look!" The father turned; his foot slipped; he rolled down the roof slowly, unable to catch at anything. "Good God!" he said in a choked voice, and he fell; his body turned over twice and crashed into the middle of the street with the dull thud of a bundle of wet linen. Gervaise stood still. A shriek was frozen on her lips. Mme Boche snatched Nana in her arms and hid her head that she might not see, and the little old woman opposite, who seemed to have waited for this scene in the drama, quietly closed her windows.