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CH. III shall keep on thinking 'ow I might 'ave stopped it and callin' myself a fool."…

He looked at her between pleading and shame. It seemed like deserting her.

Ann regarded him with tear-dimmed eyes.

"You'd better do what's good for you, Artie," she said.… "I'll be best cleaning. It's no use sending off Gwendolen before her month, and the top room wants turning out." She added with a sort of grim humour: "May as well turn it out now while I got it."

"I better go for a walk," said Kipps.…

And presently our poor exploded Kipps was marching out to bear his sudden misery. Habit turned him up the road towards his growing house, and then suddenly he perceived his direction—"Oh, Lor'!"—and turned aside and went up the steep way to the hill crest and the Sandling Road, and over the line by that tree-embowered Junction, and athwart the wide fields towards Postling—a little, black, marching figure—and so up the Downs and over the hills, whither he had never gone before.…

He came back long after dark, and Ann met him in the passage.

"Where you been, Artie?" she asked, with a strained note in her voice.