convinced absolutely he would "fumble," as Shalford would have said, and look like a fool. Somebody might laugh at him! The hungrier he got the more unendurable was the thought that anyone should laugh at him. For a time he considered an extraordinary expedient to account for his ignorance. He would go in and pretend to be a foreigner and not know English. Then they might understand.… Presently he had drifted into a part of London where there did not seem to be any refreshment places at all.
"Oh, desh!" said Kipps, in a sort of agony of indecisiveness. "The very nex' place I see, in I go."
The next place was a fried fish shop in a little side street, where there were also sausages on a gaslit grill.
He would have gone in, but suddenly a new scruple came to him, that he was too well dressed for the company he could see dimly through the steam sitting at the counter and eating with a sort of nonchalant speed.
§2
He was half minded to resort to a hansom and brave the terrors of the dining-room of the Royal Grand—they wouldn't know why he had gone out really—when the only person he knew in London appeared (as the only person one does know will do in
