Kipps | Page 7

stink just!'
'Stink?'
'Fair make you sick. It's rotten wheat.'
They fell to talking of wrecks, and so came to ironclads and wars and
such-like manly matters. Half-way to the wreck Kipps made a casual,
irrelevant remark.
'Your sister ain't a bad sort,' he said off-handedly.
'I clout her a lot,' said Sidney modestly; and, after a pause, the talk
reverted to more suitable topics.
The new wreck was full of rotting grain, and stank abominably, even as
Sid had said. This was excellent. They had it all to themselves. They
took possession of it in force, at Sid's suggestion, and had speedily to
defend it against enormous numbers of imaginary 'natives,' who were at
last driven off by loud shouts of bang bang, and vigorous thrusting and
shoving of sticks. Then, also at Sid's direction, they sailed with it into
the midst of a combined French, German, and Russian fleet,
demolishing the combination unassisted, and having descended to the
beach, clambered up the side and cut out their own vessel in brilliant
style; they underwent a magnificent shipwreck (with vocalised thunder)
and floated 'waterlogged'--so Sid insisted--upon an exhausted sea.
These things drove Ann out of mind for a time. But at last, as they
drifted without food or water upon a stagnant ocean, haggard-eyed,
chins between their hands, looking in vain for a sail, she came to mind
again abruptly.
'It's rather nice 'aving sisters,' remarked one perishing mariner.
Sid turned round and regarded him thoughtfully.

'Not it!' he said.
'No?'
'Not a bit of it.'
He grinned confidentially. 'Know too much,' he said, and afterwards,
'get out of things.'
He resumed his gloomy scrutiny of the hopeless horizon. Presently he
fell spitting jerkily between his teeth, as he had read was the way with
such ripe manhood as chews its quid.
'Sisters,' he said, 'is rot. That's what sisters are. Girls, if you like, but
sisters--No!'
'But ain't sisters girls?'
'N-eaow!' said Sid, with unspeakable scorn; and Kipps answered, 'Of
course, I didn't mean--I wasn't thinking of that.'
'You got a girl?' asked Sid, spitting very cleverly again.
Kipps admitted his deficiency. He felt compunction.
'You don't know who my girl is, Art Kipps, I bet.'
'Who is, then?' asked Kipps, still chiefly occupied by his own poverty.
'Ah!'
Kipps let a moment elapse before he did his duty. 'Tell us!'
Sid eyed him and hesitated.
'Secret?' he said.
'Secret.'

'Dying solemn?'
'Dying solemn!' Kipps' self-concentration passed into curiosity.
Sid administered a terrible oath.
Sid adhered lovingly to his facts. 'It begins with a Nem,' he said, doling
it out parsimoniously.
'M-A-U-D,' he spelt, with a stern eye on Kipps. 'C-H-A-R-T-E-R-I-S.'
Now, Maud Charteris was a young person of eighteen and the daughter
of the vicar of St. Bavon's--besides which, she had a bicycle--so that as
her name unfolded, the face of Kipps lengthened with respect. 'Get out,'
he gasped incredulously. 'She ain't your girl, Sid Pornick.'
'She is!' answered Sid stoutly.
'What--truth?'
'Truth.'
Kipps scrutinised his face. 'Reely?'
Sid touched wood, whistled, and repeated a binding doggerel with great
solemnity.
Kipps still struggled with the amazing new light on the world about
him. 'D'you mean--she knows?'
Sid flushed deeply, and his aspect became stern and gloomy. He
resumed his wistful scrutiny of the sunlit sea. 'I'd die for that girl, Art
Kipps,' he said presently; and Kipps did not press a question he felt to
be ill-timed. I'd do anything she asked me to do,' said Sid; 'just anything.
If she was to ask me to chuck myself into the sea.' He met Kipps' eye. 'I
would,' he said.
They were pensive for a space, and then Sid began to discourse in
fragments of Love, a theme upon which Kipps had already in a furtive

way meditated a little, but which, apart from badinage, he had never yet
heard talked about in the light of day. Of course, many and various
aspects of life had come to light in the muffled exchange of knowledge
that went on under the shadow of Woodrow, but this of Sentimental
Love was not among them. Sid, who was a boy with an imagination,
having once broached this topic, opened his heart, or, at any rate, a new
chamber of his heart, to Kipps, and found no fault with Kipps for a lack
of return. He produced a thumbed novelette that had played a part in his
sentimental awakening; he proffered it to Kipps, and confessed there
was a character in it, a baronet, singularly like himself. This baronet
was a person of volcanic passions, which he concealed beneath a
demeanour of 'icy cynicism.' The utmost expression he permitted
himself was to grit his teeth, and, now his attention was called to it,
Kipps remarked that Sid also had a habit of gritting his teeth,