Mrs Verloc recognised the conveyance.

Its aspect was so profoundly lamentable, with such a perfection of grotesque misery and weirdness of macabre detail, as if it were the Cab of Death itself, that Mrs Verloc, with that ready compassion of a woman for a horse (when she is not sitting behind him), exclaimed vaguely: "Poor brute!" Hanging back suddenly, Stevie inflicted an arresting jerk upon his sister.
"Poor! Poor!" he ejaculated appreciatively.

"Cabman poor too.

He told me himself." The contemplation of the infirm and lonely steed overcame him.

Jostled, but obstinate, he would remain there, trying to express the view newly opened to his sympathies of the human and equine misery in close association.