Page:The Works of H G Wells Volume 7.pdf/379

 drapers' shops full of foolish, entertaining attractions. Lewisham, in spite of his old animosities, forgot to be severe on the Shopping Class, Ethel was so vastly entertained by all these pretty follies.

Then up Regent Street by the place where the sham diamonds are, and the place where the girls display their long hair, and the place where the little chickens run about in the window, and so into Oxford Street, Holborn, through to Ludgate Hill, St. Paul's Churchyard, and on to Leadenhall and the markets where turkeys, geese, ducklings and chickens—turkeys predominant, however—hang in rows by the thousand.

"I must buy you something," said Lewisham, resuming a topic.

"No, no," said Ethel with her eye down a vista of innumerable birds.

"But I must," said Lewisham. "You had better choose it, or I shall get something wrong." His mind ran on brooches and clasps.

"You mustn't waste your money, and besides, I have that ring."

But Lewisham insisted.

"Then—if you must—I am starving. Buy me something to eat."

An immense and memorable joke. Lewisham plunged recklessly—orientally—into an awe-inspiring place with mitred napkins. They lunched on cutlets—stripped the cutlets to the bone—and little crisp brown potatoes, and they drank between them a whole half bottle of—some white wine or other, selected by Lewisham in an off-hand way from the