Page:The Works of H G Wells Volume 4.pdf/413

 window, duets that marked their emotional development by a restlessness or a kick. . . . And doubtless all this explains my preoccupation with boots.

But my friend did not think it did, to think about boots.

My friend was a realist novelist, and a man from whom hope had departed. I cannot tell you how hope had gone out of his life; some subtle disease of the soul had robbed him at last of any enterprise, or belief in coming things; and he was trying to live the few declining years that lay before him in a sort of bookish comfort, among surroundings that seemed peaceful and beautiful, by not thinking of things that were painful and cruel. And we met a tramp who limped along the lane.

"Chafed heel," I said, when we had parted from him again; "and on these pebbly byways no man goes barefooted." My friend winced; and a little silence came between us. We were both recalling things; and then for a time, when we began to talk again, until he would have no more of it, we rehearsed the miseries of boots.

We agreed that to a very great majority of people in this country boots are constantly a source of distress, giving pain and discomfort, causing trouble, causing anxiety. We tried to present the thing in a concrete form to our own minds by hazardous statistical inventions. "At the present moment," said I, "one person in ten in these islands is in discomfort through boots."

My friend thought it was nearer one in five.