Kipps, page 209 by H.G. Wells
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hy, it's called. Elementary Physiography! Some day he'll write an advanced--when he gets time.'
He let this soak into Kipps.
'I can't introduce you to lords and swells,' he went on, 'but I can show you a Famous Man, that's going to be. I can do that. Leastways--Unless--'
Sid hesitated.
'He's got a frightful cough,' he said.
'He won't care to talk to me,' weighed Kipps.
'That's all right; he won't mind. He's fond of talking. He'd talk to any one,' said Sid reassuringly, and added a perplexing bit of Londonised Latin.
'He doesn't pute anything, non alienum. You know.'
'I know,' said Kipps intelligently, over his umbrella knob, though of course that was altogether untrue.
3
Kipps found Sid's shop a practical-looking establishment, stocked with the most remarkable collection of bicycles and pieces of bicycle that he had ever beheld. 'My hiring stock,' said Sid, with a wave to this ironmongery; 'and there's the best machine at a democratic price in London, The Red Flag, built by me. See?'
He indicated a graceful gray brown framework in the window. 'And there's my stock of accessories--store prices.
'Go in for motors a bit,' added Sid.
'Mutton?' said Kipps, not hearing him distinctly.
'Motors, I said... 'Owever, Mutton Department here;' and he opened a door that had a curtain-guarded window in its upper panel, to reveal a little room with red walls and green furniture, with a white-clothed table and the generous promise of a meal. 'Fanny!' he shouted. 'Here's Art Kipps.'
A bright-eyed young woman of five or six-and-twenty in a pink print appeared, a little flushed from cooking, and wiped a hand on an apron and shook hands and smiled and said it would all be ready in a minute. She went on to say she had heard of Kipps and his luck, and meanwhile Sid vanished to draw the beer, and returned with two glasses for himself and Kipps.
'Drink that,' said Sid; and Kipps felt all the better for it.
'I give M