He was so prompt that Mr Verloc was distinctly surprised.
Already at the clatter of the shop bell Mrs Neale, blackleading the parlour grate, had looked through the door, and rising from her knees had gone, aproned, and grimy with everlasting toll, to tell Mrs Verloc in the kitchen that "there was the master come back." Winnie came no farther than the inner shop door.
"You'll want some breakfast," she said from a distance.
Mr Verloc moved his hands slightly, as if overcome by an impossible suggestion.

But once enticed into the parlour he did not reject the food set before him.

He ate as if in a public place, his hat pushed off his forehead, the skirts of his heavy overcoat hanging in a triangle on each side of the chair.

And across the length of the table covered with brown oil-cloth Winnie, his wife, talked evenly at him the wifely talk, as artfully adapted, no doubt, to the circumstances of this return as the talk of Penelope to the return of the wandering Odysseus.

Mrs Verloc, however, had done no weaving during her husband's absence.