Kipps, page 189 by H.G. Wells
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a bit at times,' said Kipps.
Another pause. Ann held out her hand.
'I'm glad I seen you,' she said.
Extraordinary impulses arose in neglected parts of Kipps' being. 'Ann,' he said, and stopped.
'Yes,' said she, and was bright to him.
They looked at one another.
All, and more than all, of those first emotions of his adolescence had come back to him. Her presence banished a multitude of countervailing considerations. It was Ann more than ever. She stood breathing close to him with her soft-looking lips a little apart and gladness in her eyes.
'I'm awful glad to see you again,' he said; 'it brings back old times.'
'Doesn't it?'
Another pause. He would have liked to have had a long talk to her, to have gone for a walk with her or something, to have drawn nearer to her in any conceivable way, and above all to have had some more of the appreciation that shone in her eyes, but a vestige of Folkestone, still clinging to him, told him it 'wouldn't do.' 'Well,' he said, 'I must be getting on,' and turned away reluctantly, with a will under compulsion--
When he looked back from the corner she was still at the gate. She was perhaps a little disconcerted by his retreat. He felt that. He hesitated for a moment, half turned, stood, and suddenly did great things with his hat. That hat! The wonderful hat of our civilisation!...
In another minute he was engaged in a singularly absent-minded conversation with his uncle about the usual topics.
His uncle was very anxious to buy him a few upright clocks as an investment for subsequent sale. And there were also some very nice globes, one terrestrial and the other celestial, in a shop at Lydd that would look well in a drawing-room, and inevitably increase in value... Kipps either did or did not agree to this purchase, he was unable to recollect.
The south-west wind perhaps helped him back; at any rate he found himself through Dymchurch without having noticed the place. There came an odd effect as