She turned her head towards her mother.
"Whatever did you want to do that for ?" she exclaimed, in scandalised astonishment.
The shock must have been severe to make her depart from that distant and uninquiring acceptance of facts which was her force and her safeguard in life.
"Weren't you made comfortable enough here ?" She had lapsed into these inquiries, but next moment she saved the consistency of her conduct by resuming her dusting, while the old woman sat scared and dumb under her dingy white cap and lustreless dark wig.
Winnie finished the chair, and ran the duster along the mahogany at the back of the horse-hair sofa on which Mr Verloc loved to take his ease in hat and overcoat.

She was intent on her work, but presently she permitted herself another question.
"How in the world did you manage it, mother ?" As not affecting the inwardness of things, which it was Mrs Verloc's principle to ignore, this curiosity was excusable.

It bore merely on the methods.

The old woman welcomed it eagerly as bringing forward something that could be talked about with much sincerity.
She favoured her daughter by an exhaustive answer, full of names and enriched by side comments upon the ravages of time as observed in the alteration of human countenances.

The names were principally the names of licensed victuallers--"poor daddy's friends, my dear." She enlarged with special appreciation on the kindness and condescension of a large brewer, a Baronet and an M.P., the Chairman of the Governors of the Charity.