stood afar off, as it were—the better part of a yard—and said she might let him kiss her, and then that he didn't see what good it was for her to be his girl if he couldn't kiss her.
She repeated that kissing was silly. A certain estrangement took them homeward. They arrived in the dusky High Street not exactly together, and not exactly apart, but struggling. They had not kissed, but all the guilt of kissing was between them. When Kipps saw the portly contours of his uncle standing dimly in the shop doorway, his footsteps faltered, and the space between our young couple increased. Above, the window over Pornick's shop was open, and Mrs. Pornick was visible, taking the air. Kipps assumed an expression of extreme innocence. He found himself face to face with his uncle's advanced outposts of waistcoat buttons.
"Where ye bin, my boy?"
"Bin for a walk, uncle."
"Not along of that brat of Pornick's?"
"Along of who?"
"That gell"—indicating Ann with his pipe.
"Oh, no, uncle!"—very faintly.
"Run in, my boy."
Old Kipps stood aside, with an oblique glance upward, and his nephew brushed clumsily by him and vanished out of sight of the street, into the vague obscurity of the little shop. The door closed behind old Kipps with a nervous jangle of its bell, and he set himself to light the single oil lamp that illuminated
