"Might be father and son," she said to herself. She thought also that Mr
Verloc was as much of a father as poor Stevie ever had in his life. She
was aware also that it was her work. And with peaceful pride she
congratulated herself on a certain resolution she had taken a few years
before. It had cost her some effort, and even a few tears.
She congratulated herself still more on observing in the course of days
that Mr Verloc seemed to be taking kindly to Stevie's companionship. Now,
when ready to go out for his walk, Mr Verloc called aloud to the boy, in
the spirit, no doubt, in which a man invites the attendance of the
household dog, though, of course, in a different manner. In the house Mr
Verloc could be detected staring curiously at Stevie a good deal. His
own demeanour had changed. Taciturn still, he was not so listless. Mrs
Verloc thought that he was rather jumpy at times. It might have been
regarded as an improvement. As to Stevie, he moped no longer at the foot
of the clock, but muttered to himself in corners instead in a threatening
tone. When asked "What is it you're saying, Stevie?" he merely opened
his mouth, and squinted at his sister. At odd times he clenched his
fists without apparent cause, and when discovered in solitude would be
scowling at the wall, with the sheet of paper and the pencil given him
for drawing circles lying blank and idle on the kitchen table. This was
a change, but it was no improvement. Mrs Verloc including all these
vagaries under the general definition of excitement, began to fear that
Stevie was hearing more than was good for him of her husband's
conversations with his friends. During his "walks" Mr Verloc, of course,
met and conversed with various persons. It could hardly be otherwise.
His walks were an integral part of his outdoor activities, which his wife
had never looked deeply into. Mrs Verloc felt that the position was
delicate, but she faced it with the same impenetrable calmness which
impressed and even astonished the customers of the shop and made the
other visitors keep their distance a little wonderingly. No! She feared
that there were things not good for Stevie to hear of, she told her
husband. It only excited the poor boy, because he could not help them
being so. Nobody could.
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