"But you can't spare the time to come with him, and if he should forget
himself and lose his way and somebody spoke to him sharply, his name and
address may slip his memory, and he'll remain lost for days and days--"

The vision of a workhouse infirmary for poor Stevie--if only during
inquiries--wrung her heart. For she was a proud woman. Winnie's stare
had grown hard, intent, inventive.

"I can't bring him to you myself every week," she cried. "But don't you
worry, mother. I'll see to it that he don't get lost for long."

They felt a peculiar bump; a vision of brick pillars lingered before the
rattling windows of the cab; a sudden cessation of atrocious jolting and
uproarious jingling dazed the two women. What had happened? They sat
motionless and scared in the profound stillness, till the door came open,
and a rough, strained whispering was heard:

"Here you are!"

A range of gabled little houses, each with one dim yellow window, on the
ground floor, surrounded the dark open space of a grass plot planted with
shrubs and railed off from the patchwork of lights and shadows in the
wide road, resounding with the dull rumble of traffic. Before the door
of one of these tiny houses--one without a light in the little downstairs
window--the cab had come to a standstill. Mrs Verloc's mother got out
first, backwards, with a key in her hand. Winnie lingered on the
flagstone path to pay the cabman. Stevie, after helping to carry inside
a lot of small parcels, came out and stood under the light of a gas-lamp
belonging to the Charity. The cabman looked at the pieces of silver,
which, appearing very minute in his big, grimy palm, symbolised the
insignificant results which reward the ambitious courage and toil of a
mankind whose day is short on this earth of evil.

He had been paid decently--four one-shilling pieces--and he contemplated
them in perfect stillness, as if they had been the surprising terms of a
melancholy problem. The slow transfer of that treasure to an inner
pocket demanded much laborious groping in the depths of decayed clothing.
His form was squat and without flexibility. Stevie, slender, his
shoulders a little up, and his hands thrust deep in the side pockets of
his warm overcoat, stood at the edge of the path, pouting.

The cabman, pausing in his deliberate movements, seemed struck by some
misty recollection.

"Oh! 'Ere you are, young fellow," he whispered. "You'll know him
again--won't yo