Kipps Part 42

"Dinner, we call it," said Sid. "But that's all right. You can't get anything to eat hereabout. If you're not too haughty to do a bit of slumming, there's some mutton spoiling for me now----"

The word "mutton" affected Kipps greatly.

"It won't take us 'arf an hour," said Sid, and Kipps was carried.

He discovered another means of London locomotion in the Underground Railway, and recovered his self-possession in that interest. "You don't mind going third?" asked Sid, and Kipps said, "Nort a _bit_ of it." They were silent in the train for a time, on account of strangers in the carriage, and then Sid began to explain who it was that he wanted Kipps to meet. "It's a chap named Masterman--do you no end of good.

"He occupies our first floor front room, you know. It isn't so much for gain I let as company. We don't _want_ the whole 'ouse, and another, I knew the man before. Met him at our Sociological, and after a bit he said he wasn't comfortable where he was. That's how it came about. He's a first-cla.s.s chap--first-cla.s.s. Science! You should see his books!

"Properly he's a sort of journalist. He's written a lot of things, but he's been too ill lately to do very much. Poetry he's written, all sorts. He writes for the _Commonweal_ sometimes, and sometimes he reviews books. 'E's got 'eaps of books--'eaps. Besides selling a lot.

"He knows a regular lot of people, and all sorts of things. He's been a dentist, and he's a qualified chemist, an' I seen him often reading German and French. Taught 'imself. He was here----"

Sid indicated South Kensington, which had come opportunely outside the carriage windows, with a nod of his head, "--three years. Studying science. But you'll see 'im. When he really gets to talking--he _pours_ it out."

"Ah!" said Kipps, nodding sympathetically, with his two hands on his umbrella k.n.o.b.

"He'll do big things some day," said Sid. "He's written a book on science already. 'Physiography,' 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 with me," weighed Kipps.

"That's all right; _he_ won't mind. He's fond of talking. He'd talk to anyone," said Sid, rea.s.suringly, and added a perplexing bit of Londonized Latin. "He doesn't _pute_ anything, _non alienum_. You know."

"_I_ know," said Kipps, intelligently, over his umbrella k.n.o.b, 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, grey-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 'ere," 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. "f.a.n.n.y!" 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 ap.r.o.n 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 gla.s.ses for himself and Kipps.

"Drink that," said Sid, and Kipps felt all the better for it.

"I give Mr. Masterman _'is_ upstairs a hour ago," said Mrs. Sid. "I didn't think 'e ought to wait."

A rapid succession of brisk movements on the part of everyone, and they were all four at dinner--the fourth person being Master Walt Whitman p.o.r.nick, a cheerful young gentleman of one and a half, who was given a spoon to hammer on the table with to keep him quiet, and who got "Kipps"

right at the first effort and kept it all through the meal, combining it first with this previous acquisition, and then that. "Peac.o.c.k Kipps"

said Master Walt, at which there was great laughter, and also "More Mutton, Kipps."

"He's a regular oner," said Mrs. Sid, "for catching up words. You can't say a word but what 'e's on to it."

There were no serviettes and less ceremony, and Kipps thought he had never enjoyed a meal so much. Everyone was a little excited by the meeting and chatting, and disposed to laugh, and things went off easily from the very beginning. If there was a pause Master Walt filled it in.

Mrs. Sid, who tempered her enormous admiration for Sid's intellect and his socialism and his severe business methods by a motherly sense of her s.e.x and seniority, spoke of them both as "you boys," and dilated--when she was not urging Kipps to have some more of this or that--on the disparity between herself and her husband.

"Shouldn't ha' thought there was a year between you," said Kipps; "you seem jest a match."

"_I'm his_ match, anyhow," said Mrs. Sid, and no epigram of young Wals.h.i.+ngham's was ever better received.

"Match," said young Walt, coming in on the trail of the joke and getting a round for himself.

Any sense of superior fortune had long vanished from Kipps' mind, and he found himself looking at host and hostess with enormous respect. Really, old Sid was a wonderful chap, here in his own house at two and twenty, carving his own mutton and lording it over wife and child. No legacies needed by him! And Mrs. Sid, so kind and bright and hearty! And the child, old Sid's child! Old Sid had jumped round a bit. It needed the sense of his fortune at the back of his mind to keep Kipps from feeling abject. He resolved he'd buy young Walt something tremendous in toys at the first opportunity.

"Drop more beer, Art?"

"Right you are, old man."

"Cut Mr. Kipps a bit more bread, Sid."

"Can't I pa.s.s _you_ a bit?"

Sid was all right, Sid was, and there was no mistake about that.

It was growing up in his mind that Sid was the brother of Ann, but he said nothing about her for excellent reasons. After all, because he remembered Sid's irritation at her name when they had met in New Romney seemed to show a certain separation. They didn't tell each other much.... He didn't know how things might be between Ann and Sid, either.

Still, for all that, Sid was Ann's brother.

The furniture of the room did not a.s.sert itself very much above the cheerful business at the table, but Kipps was impressed with the idea that it was pretty. There was a dresser at the end with a number of gay plates and a mug or so, a Labour Day poster, by Walter Crane, on the wall, and through the gla.s.s and over the blind of the shop door one had a glimpse of the bright coloured advertis.e.m.e.nt cards of bicycle dealers, and a shelfful of boxes labelled, The Paragon Bell, The Scarum Bell, and The Patent Omi! Horn....

It seemed incredible that he had been in Folkestone that morning, and even now his Aunt and Uncle----!

Brrr. It didn't do to think of his Aunt and Uncle.

--4

When Sid repeated his invitation to come and see Masterman, Kipps, now flushed with beer and Irish stew, said he didn't mind if he did, and after a preliminary shout from Sid that was answered by a voice and a cough, the two went upstairs.

"Masterman's a rare one," said Sid over his arm and in an undertone.