Page:The Works of H G Wells Volume 8.djvu/310

 call because Miss Punchafer, being so deaf, one could say practically what one liked—and then outside the gate he shirked again. "I can't go in," he said in a faded voice.

"You must," said Helen, beautiful as ever, but even more than a little hard and forbidding.

"I can't."

He produced his handkerchief hastily, thrust it to his face, and regarded her over it with rounded, hostile eyes.

Possible," he said, in a hoarse, strange voice out of the handkerchief. "Nozzez bleedin'."

But that was the end of his power of resistance, and when the rally for the Anagram Tea occurred she bore down his feeble protests altogether. She insisted. She said frankly, "I am going to give you a good talking to about this," and she did

From Coote he gathered something of the nature of Anagrams and Anagram parties. An anagram, Coote explained, was a word spelt the same way as another, only differently arranged, as, for instance, T. O. C. O. E. would be an anagram for his own name, Coote.

"T. O. C. O. E.," repeated Kipps very carefully.

"Or T. O. E. C. O.," said Coote.

"Or T. O. E. C. O.," said Kipps, assisting his poor head by nodding it at each letter.

"Toe Company like," he said in his efforts to comprehend.

When Kipps was clear what an anagram meant, Coote came to the second heading, the Tea. Kipps gathered there might be from thirty to sixty people