hough she had been alive and young.

Sometimes it was Mrs Verloc who would appear at the call of the cracked
bell. Winnie Verloc was a young woman with a full bust, in a tight
bodice, and with broad hips. Her hair was very tidy. Steady-eyed like
her husband, she preserved an air of unfathomable indifference behind the
rampart of the counter. Then the customer of comparatively tender years
would get suddenly disconcerted at having to deal with a woman, and with
rage in his heart would proffer a request for a bottle of marking ink,
retail value sixpence (price in Verloc's shop one-and-sixpence), which,
once outside, he would drop stealthily into the gutter.

The evening visitors--the men with collars turned up and soft hats rammed
down--nodded familiarly to Mrs Verloc, and with a muttered greeting,
lifted up the flap at the end of the counter in order to pass into the
back parlour, which gave access to a passage and to a steep flight of
stairs. The door of the shop was the only means of entrance to the house
in which Mr Verloc carried on his business of a seller of shady wares,
exercised his vocation of a protector of society, and cultivated his
domestic virtues. These last were pronounced. He was thoroughly
domesticated. Neither his spiritual, nor his mental, nor his physical
needs were of the kind to take him much abroad. He found at home the
ease of his body and the peace of his conscience, together with Mrs
Verloc's wifely attentions and Mrs Verloc's mother's deferential regard.

Winnie's mother was a stout, wheezy woman, with a large brown face. She
wore a black wig under a white cap. Her swollen legs rendered her
inactive. She considered herself to be of French descent, which might
have been true; and after a good many years of married life with a
licensed victualler of the more common sort, she provided for the years
of widowhood by letting furnished apartments for gentlemen near Vauxhall
Bridge Road in a square once of some splendour and still included in the
district of Belgravia. This topographical fact was of some advantage in
advertising her rooms; but the patrons of the worthy widow were not
exactly of the fashionable kind. Such as they were, her daughter Winnie
helped to look after them. Traces of the French descent which the widow
boasted of were apparent in Winnie too. They were apparent in the
extremely neat and artistic arrangement of her glossy dark hair. Winnie
had also other charms: