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When Kipps left New Romney, with a small yellow tin box, a still smaller portmanteau, a new umbrella, and a keepsake half-sixpence, to become a draper, he was a youngster of fourteen, thin, with whimsical drakes’-tails at the pole of his head, smallish features, and eyes that were sometimes very light and sometimes very dark, gifts those of his birth; and by the nature of his training he was indistinct in his speech, confused in his mind, and retreating in his manners. Inexorable fate had appointed him to serve his country in commerce, and the same national bias² towards private enterprise and leaving bad alone, which had left his general education to Mr. Woodrow, now indentured³ him firmly into the hands of Mr. Shalford of the Folkestone Drapery Bazaar⁴. Apprenticeship⁷ is still the recognised English way to the distributing branch of the social service. If Mr. Kipps had been so unfortunate as to have been born a German he might have been educated in an elaborate and costly⁸ special school (‘over-educated — crammed⁹ up’— old Kipps) to fit him for his end — such being their pedagogic way.

He might — But why make unpatriotic reflections in a novel? There was nothing pedagogic about Mr. Shalford.

He was an irascible, energetic little man with hairy hands, for the most part under his coat-tails, a long, shiny, bald head, a pointed¹ aquiline¹¹ nose a little askew¹², and a neatly¹³ trimmed beard. He walked lightly and with a confident jerk, and he was given to humming. He had added to exceptional business ‘push,’

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