books again in part payment for new ones within a specified period. When it failed, all sorts of people were left with these unredeemed pledges in hand.
§5
Amidst all this bustle and interest, all this going to and fro before they "moved in" to the High Street, came the great crisis that hung over the Kippses, and one morning in the small hours Ann's child was born.…
Kipps was coming to manhood swiftly now. The once rabbit-like soul that had been so amazed by the discovery of "chubes" in the human interior and so shocked by the sight of a woman's shoulder-blades, that had found shame and anguish in a mislaid Gibus and terror in an Anagram Tea, was at last facing the greater realities. He came suddenly upon the master thing in life, birth. He passed through hours of listening, hours of impotent fear in the night and in the dawn, and then there was put into his arms something most wonderful, a weak and wailing creature, incredibly, heart-stirringly soft and pitiful, with minute appealing hands that it wrung his heart to see. He held this miracle in his arms and touched its tender cheek as if he feared his lips might injure it. And this marvel was his Son!
And there was Ann, with a greater strangeness and a greater familiarity in her quality than he had ever found before. There were little beads of perspira-
