Kipps, page 269 by H.G. Wells
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ing and stroking his moustache since he had read the architect's letter. 'I think I'd like a little bit of a study--not a big one, of course, but one with a desk and bookshelves, like there was in Hughenden. I'd like that.'
It was only after they had talked to the architect again and seen how scandalised he was at the idea of not having a drawing-room, that they consented to that Internal Feature. They consented to please him. 'But we shan't never use it,' said Ann.
Kipps had his way about a study. 'When I get that study,' said Kipps, 'I shall do a bit of reading I've long wanted to do. I shall make a habit of going in there and reading something an hour every day. There's Shakespeare and a lot of things a man like me ought to read. Besides, we got to 'ave somewhere to put the Encyclopaedia. I've always thought a study was about what I've wanted all along. You can't 'elp reading if you got a study. If you 'aven't, there's nothing for it, so far's I can see, but treshy novels.'
He looked down at Ann, and was surprised to see a joyless thoughtfulness upon her face.
'Fency, Ann!' he said not too buoyantly, ''aving a little 'ouse of our own!'
'It won't be a little 'ouse,' said Ann, 'not with all them rooms.'
Any lingering doubt in that matter was dispelled when it came to plans.
The architect drew three sets of plans on a transparent bluish sort of paper that smelt abominably. He painted them very nicely; brick-red and ginger, and arsenic green and a leaden sort of blue, and brought them over to show our young people. The first set were very simple, with practically no External Features--'a plain style,' he said it was--but it looked a big sort of house, nevertheless; the second had such extras as a conservatory, bow windows of various sorts, one roughcast gable and one half-timbered ditto in plaster, and a sort of overhung veranda, and was much more imposing; and the third was quite fungoid with External Features, and honeycombed with Internal ones; it was, he said, '