Kipps, page 179 by H.G. Wells
<< Return to Title Details & Download180
o dwell on the Revels a great deal; it was her exemplary story, and when she spoke of Sidney-- she often called him Sidney--she would become thoughtful. She spoke most of him, naturally, because she had still to meet Mrs. Revel... Certainly they would be in the world in no time, even if the distant connection with the Beauprés family came to nothing.
Kipps gathered that with his marriage and the movement to London they were to undergo that subtle change of name Coote had first adumbrated. They were to become 'Cuyps,' Mr. and Mrs. Cuyps. Or was it Cuyp?
'It'll be rum at first,' said Kipps.
'I dessay I shall soon get into it,' he said...
So in their several ways they all contributed to enlarge and refine and exercise the intelligence of Kipps. And behind all these other influences, and as it were presiding over and correcting these influences, was Kipps' nearest friend, Coote, a sort of master of the ceremonies. You figure his face, blowing slightly with solicitude, his slate-coloured, projecting, but not unkindly eye intent upon our hero. The thing, he thought, was going off admirably. He studied Kipps' character immensely. He would discuss him with his sister, with Mrs. Walshingham, with the freckled girl, with any one who would stand it. 'He is an interesting character,' he would say, 'likeable--a sort of gentleman by instinct. He takes to all these things. He improves every day. He'll soon get Sang-Froid. We took him up just in time. He wants now--Well--next year, perhaps, if there is a good Extension Literature course he might go in for it. He wants to go in for something like that.'
'He's going in for his bicycle now,' said Mrs. Walshingham.
'That's all right for summer,' said Coote, 'but he wants to go in for some serious intellectual interest, something to take him out of himself a little more. Savoir Faire and self-forgetfulness is more than half the secret of Sang-Froid'...
3
The world, as Coote presented it, was in part an endorsem