c occupation
she was engaged upon. It was the dusting of the furniture in the parlour
behind the shop. She turned her head towards her mother.

"Whatever did you want to do that for?" she exclaimed, in scandalised
astonishment.

The shock must have been severe to make her depart from that distant and
uninquiring acceptance of facts which was her force and her safeguard in
life.

"Weren't you made comfortable enough here?"

She had lapsed into these inquiries, but next moment she saved the
consistency of her conduct by resuming her dusting, while the old woman
sat scared and dumb under her dingy white cap and lustreless dark wig.

Winnie finished the chair, and ran the duster along the mahogany at the
back of the horse-hair sofa on which Mr Verloc loved to take his ease in
hat and overcoat. She was intent on her work, but presently she
permitted herself another question.

"How in the world did you manage it, mother?"

As not affecting the inwardness of things, which it was Mrs Verloc's
principle to ignore, this curiosity was excusable. It bore merely on the
methods. The old woman welcomed it eagerly as bringing forward something
that could be talked about with much sincerity.

She favoured her daughter by an exhaustive answer, full of names and
enriched by side comments upon the ravages of time as observed in the
alteration of human countenances. The names were principally the names
of licensed victuallers--"poor daddy's friends, my dear." She enlarged
with special appreciation on the kindness and condescension of a large
brewer, a Baronet and an M. P., the Chairman of the Governors of the
Charity. She expressed herself thus warmly because she had been allowed
to interview by appointment his Private Secretary--"a very polite
gentleman, all in black, with a gentle, sad voice, but so very, very thin
and quiet. He was like a shadow, my dear."

Winnie, prolonging her dusting operations till the tale was told to the
end, walked out of the parlour into the kitchen (down two steps) in her
usual manner, without the slightest comment.

Shedding a few tears in sign of rejoicing at her daughter's mansuetude in
this terrible affair, Mrs Verloc's mother gave play to her astuteness in
the direction of her furniture, because it was her own; and sometimes she
wished it hadn't been. Heroism is all very well, but there are
circumstances when the disposal of a few tables and chairs, brass
bedsteads, and so on, may be