KIPPS
Kipps took it.
"I put sugar once," said Ann.
"Oo, desh it! Oo cares?" said Kipps, taking an extraordinarily large additional lump with fury-quivering fingers, and putting his cup with a slight excess of force on the recess cupboard. "Oo cares?"
"I wouldn't 'ave 'ad that 'appen," he said, bidding steadily against accomplished things, "for twenty pounds."
He gloomed in silence through a long minute or so.
Then Ann said the fatal thing that exploded him. "Artie!" she said.
"What?"
"There's Buttud Toce down there! By your foot!"
There was a pause; husband and wife regarded one another.
"Buttud Toce!" he said. "You go and mess up them callers and then you try and stuff me up with Buttud Toce! Buttud Toce indeed! 'Ere's our first chance of knowing anyone that's at all fit to 'sociate with— Look 'ere, Ann! Tell you what it is—you got to return that call."
"Return that call!"
"Yes, you got to return that call. That's what you got to do! I know—" He waved his arm vaguely towards the miscellany of books in the recess. "It's in Manners and Rools of Good S'ity. You got to find jest 'ow many cards to leave and you got to go and leave 'em. See?"
Ann's face expressed terror. "But, Artie, 'ow can I?"
"'Ow can you? 'Ow could you? You got to do
412
