horse's head held aloft in his fist, the lank animal walking in
stiff and forlorn dignity, the dark, low box on wheels rolling behind
comically with an air of waddling. They turned to the left. There was a
pub down the street, within fifty yards of the gate.

Stevie left alone beside the private lamp-post of the Charity, his hands
thrust deep into his pockets, glared with vacant sulkiness. At the
bottom of his pockets his incapable weak hands were clinched hard into a
pair of angry fists. In the face of anything which affected directly or
indirectly his morbid dread of pain, Stevie ended by turning vicious. A
magnanimous indignation swelled his frail chest to bursting, and caused
his candid eyes to squint. Supremely wise in knowing his own
powerlessness, Stevie was not wise enough to restrain his passions. The
tenderness of his universal charity had two phases as indissolubly joined
and connected as the reverse and obverse sides of a medal. The anguish
of immoderate compassion was succeeded by the pain of an innocent but
pitiless rage. Those two states expressing themselves outwardly by the
same signs of futile bodily agitation, his sister Winnie soothed his
excitement without ever fathoming its twofold character. Mrs Verloc
wasted no portion of this transient life in seeking for fundamental
information. This is a sort of economy having all the appearances and
some of the advantages of prudence. Obviously it may be good for one not
to know too much. And such a view accords very well with constitutional
indolence.

On that evening on which it may be said that Mrs Verloc's mother having
parted for good from her children had also departed this life, Winnie
Verloc did not investigate her brother's psychology. The poor boy was
excited, of course. After once more assuring the old woman on the
threshold that she would know how to guard against the risk of Stevie
losing himself for very long on his pilgrimages of filial piety, she took
her brother's arm to walk away. Stevie did not even mutter to himself,
but with the special sense of sisterly devotion developed in her earliest
infancy, she felt that the boy was very much excited indeed. Holding
tight to his arm, under the appearance of leaning on it, she thought of
some words suitable to the occasion.

"Now, Stevie, you must look well after me at the crossings, and get first
into the 'bus, like a good brother."

This appeal to manly protection was received