KIPPS

THE STORY OF A SIMPLE SOUL

Books by H. G. Wells

KIPPS

THE STORY OF A SIMPLE SOUL
BY H. G. WELLS

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1906

Copyright 1906, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
Published, 1906

"Those individuals who have led secluded or isolated lives, or have hitherto moved in other spheres than those wherein well-bred people move, will gather all the information necessary from these pages to render them thoroughly conversant with the manners and amenities of society."

Manners and Rules of Good Society

By a Member of the Aristocracy

CONTENTS:

BOOK I THE MAKING OF KIPPS

CHAPTER I THE LITTLE SHOP AT NEW ROMNEY

§1

Until he was nearly arrived at adolescence it did not become clear to Kipps how it was that he was under the care of an aunt and uncle instead of having a father and mother like other boys. Yet he had vague memories of a somewhere else that was not New Romney—of a dim room, a window looking down on white buildings—and of a some one else who talked to forgotten people, and who was his mother. He could not recall her features very distinctly, but he remembered with extreme definition a white dress she wore, with a pattern of little sprigs of flowers and little bows of ribbon upon it, and a girdle of straight-ribbed white ribbon about the waist. Linked with this, he knew not how, were clouded half-obliterated recollections of scenes in which there was weeping, weeping in which he