Before his extended arm could put down the hat Stevie pounced upon it, and bore it off reverently into the kitchen.
And again Mr Verloc was surprised.
"You could do anything with that boy, Adolf," Mrs Verloc said, with her best air of inflexible calmness.

"He would go through fire for you.
He--" She paused attentive, her ear turned towards the door of the kitchen.
There Mrs Neale was scrubbing the floor.

At Stevie's appearance she groaned lamentably, having observed that he could be induced easily to bestow for the benefit of her infant children the shilling his sister Winnie presented him with from time to time.

On all fours amongst the puddles, wet and begrimed, like a sort of amphibious and domestic animal living in ash-bins and dirty water, she uttered the usual exordium: "It's all very well for you, kept doing nothing like a gentleman." And she followed it with the everlasting plaint of the poor, pathetically mendacious, miserably authenticated by the horrible breath of cheap rum and soap-suds.

She scrubbed hard, snuffling all the time, and talking volubly.