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316 "Well," he said, trying to invent an excuse on the spur of the moment. "Fact is," he explained, "I was jest looking 'round to get a bit of lunch."

"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-class chap—first-class. 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