“Drapery?” said Ann.
“You want such a lot of capital for the drapery, mor’n a thousand pounds you want by a long way—to start it anything like proper.”
“Well, outfitting. Like Buggins was going to do.”
Kipps glanced at that for a moment, because the idea had not occurred to him. Then he came back to his prepossession.
“Well, I thought of something else, Ann,” he said. “You see, I’ve always thought a little bookshop. It isn’t like the drapery—’aving to be learnt. I thought—even before this smash-up—’ow I’d like to ’ave something to do, instead of always ’aving ’olidays always like we ’ave been ’aving.”
He reflected.
“You don’t know much about books, do you, Artie?”
“You don’t want to.” He illustrated. “I noticed when we used to go to that Lib’ry at Folkestone, ladies weren’t anything like what they was in a draper’s—if you ’aven’t got just what they want it’s ‘Oh, no!’ and out they go. But in a book shop it’s different. One book’s very like another—after all, what is it? Something to read and done with. It’s not a thing that matters like print dresses or serviettes—where you either like ’em or don’t, and people judge you by. They take what you give ’em in books and lib’ries, and glad to be told what to. See ’ow we was—up at that lib’ry.” …
He paused. “You see, Ann—
“Well, I read ’n ’dvertisement the other day. I been asking Mr. Bean. It said—five ’undred pounds.”
“What did?”
“Branches,” said Kipps.
Ann failed to understand. “It’s a sort of thing that gets up book shops all over the country,” said Kipps. “I didn’t tell you, but I arst about it a bit. On’y I dropped it again. Before this smash, I mean. I’d thought I’d like to keep a shop for a lark, on’y then I thought it silly. Besides it ’ud ’ave been beneath me.”
He blushed vividly. “It was a sort of projek of mine, Ann.
“On’y it wouldn’t ’ave done,” he added.
It was a tortuous journey when the Kippses set out to explain anything to each other. But through a maze of fragmentary elucidations and questions, their minds did presently begin to approximate to a picture of a compact, bright, little shop, as a framework for themselves.
“I thought of it one day when I was in Folkestone. I thought of it one day when I was looking in at a window. I see a chap dressin’ a window and he was whistlin’ reg’lar light-’arted. … I thought then I’d like to keep a bookshop, any’ow, jest for something to do. And when people weren’t about, then you could sit and read the books. See? It wouldn’t be ’arf bad.” …
They mused, each with elbows on table and knuckles to lips, looking with speculative eyes at each other.
“Very likely we’ll be ’appier than we should ’ave been with more money,” said Kipps presently.
“We wasn’t ’ardly suited,” reflected Ann, and left her sentence incomplete.
“Fish out of water like,” said Kipps. …
“You won’t ’ave to return that call now,” said Kipps, opening a new branch of the question. “That’s one good thing.”
“Lor’!” said Ann, visibly brightening, “no more I shan’t!”
“I don’t s’pose they’d want you to, even if you did—with things as they are.”
A certain added brightness came into Ann’s face. “Nobody won’t be able to come leaving cards on us, Artie, now, any more. We are out of that!”
“There isn’t no necessity for us to be stuck up,” said Kipps, “any more forever! ’Ere we are, Ann, common people, with jest no position at all, as you might say, to keep up. No sev’nts, not if you don’t like. No dressin’ better than other people. If it wasn’t we been robbed—dashed if I’d care a rap about losing that money. I b’lieve”—his face shone with the rare pleasure of paradox—“I reely b’lieve, Ann, it’ll prove a savin’ in the end.”
The remarkable advertisement which had fired Kipps’ imagination with this dream of a bookshop opened out in the most alluring way. It was one little facet in a comprehensive scheme of transatlantic origin, which was to make our old-world methods of book-selling “sit up,” and it displayed an imaginative briskness, a lucidity and promise that aroused the profoundest scepticism in the mind of Mr. Bean. To Kipps’ renewed investigations it presented itself in an expository illustrated pamphlet (far too well printed, Mr. Bean thought, for a reputable undertaking) of the most convincing sort. Mr. Bean would not let him sink his capital in shares in its projected company that was to make all things new in the world of books, but he could not prevent Kipps becoming one of their associated booksellers. And so when presently it became apparent that an epoch was not to be made, and the “Associated Booksellers’ Trading Union (Limited)” receded and dissolved and liquidated (a few drops) and vanished and went away to talk about something else, Kipps remained floating undamaged in this interestingly uncertain universe as an independent bookseller.
Except that it failed, the Associated Booksellers’ Trading Union had all the stigmata of success. Its fault, perhaps, was that it had them all instead of only one or two. It was to buy wholesale for all its members and associates and exchange stock, having a common books-in-stock list and a common lending library, and it was to provide a uniform registered shop front to signify all these things to the intelligent passerby. Except that it was controlled by buoyant young Over-men with a touch of genius in their arithmetic, it was, I say, a most plausible and hopeful project. Kipps went several times to London and an agent came to Hythe; Mr. Bean made some timely interventions, and then behind a veil of planks and an announcement in the High Street, the uniform registered shop front came rapidly into being. “Associated Booksellers’ Trading Union,” said this shop front, in a refined, artistic lettering that bookbuyers were going to value, as wise men over forty value the proper label for Berncasteler Doctor, and then, “Arthur
