and, his head lowered, he strode straight behind the counter, and
let himself fall into the chair, as though he had tramped all the way
from Dover. It was early morning. Stevie, dusting various objects
displayed in the front windows, turned to gape at him with reverence and
awe.

"Here!" said Mr Verloc, giving a slight kick to the gladstone bag on the
floor; and Stevie flung himself upon it, seized it, bore it off with
triumphant devotion. He was so prompt that Mr Verloc was distinctly
surprised.

Already at the clatter of the shop bell Mrs Neale, blackleading the
parlour grate, had looked through the door, and rising from her knees had
gone, aproned, and grimy with everlasting toll, to tell Mrs Verloc in the
kitchen that "there was the master come back."

Winnie came no farther than the inner shop door.

"You'll want some breakfast," she said from a distance.

Mr Verloc moved his hands slightly, as if overcome by an impossible
suggestion. But once enticed into the parlour he did not reject the food
set before him. He ate as if in a public place, his hat pushed off his
forehead, the skirts of his heavy overcoat hanging in a triangle on each
side of the chair. And across the length of the table covered with brown
oil-cloth Winnie, his wife, talked evenly at him the wifely talk, as
artfully adapted, no doubt, to the circumstances of this return as the
talk of Penelope to the return of the wandering Odysseus. Mrs Verloc,
however, had done no weaving during her husband's absence. But she had
had all the upstairs room cleaned thoroughly, had sold some wares, had
seen Mr Michaelis several times. He had told her the last time that he
was going away to live in a cottage in the country, somewhere on the
London, Chatham, and Dover line. Karl Yundt had come too, once, led
under the arm by that "wicked old housekeeper of his." He was "a
disgusting old man." Of Comrade Ossipon, whom she had received curtly,
entrenched behind the counter with a stony face and a faraway gaze, she
said nothing, her mental reference to the robust anarchist being marked
by a short pause, with the faintest possible blush. And bringing in her
brother Stevie as soon as she could into the current of domestic events,
she mentioned that the boy had moped a good deal.

"It's all along of mother leaving us like this."

Mr Verloc neither said, "Damn!" nor yet "Stevie be hanged!" And Mrs
Verloc, not let into the secret of his thoughts, failed