"That's all right; he won't mind. He's fond of talking. He'd talk to anyone," said Sid, reassuringly, and added a perplexing bit of Londonized Latin. "He doesn't pute anything, non alienum. You know."
"I know," said Kipps, intelligently, over his umbrella knob, though of course that was altogether untrue.
§3
Kipps found Sid's shop a practical looking establishment, stocked with the most remarkable collection of bicycles and pieces of bicycle that he had ever beheld. "My hiring stock," said Sid, with a wave to this ironmongery, "and there's the best machine at a democratic price in London, The Red-Flag, built by me. See?"
He indicated a graceful, grey-brown framework in the window. "And there's my stock of accessories—store prices.
"Go in for motors a bit," added Sid.
"Mutton?" said Kipps, not hearing him distinctly.
"Motors, I said.... 'Owever, Mutton Department 'ere," and he opened a door that had a curtain guarded window in its upper panel, to reveal a little room with red walls and green furniture, with a white clothed table and the generous promise of a meal. "Fanny!" he shouted. "Here's Art Kipps."
A bright-eyed young woman of five or six and twenty in a pink print appeared, a little flushed from cooking, and wiped a hand on an apron and shook hands and smiled, and said it would all be ready in a minute. She went on to say she had heard of Kipps and his luck, and meanwhile Sid vanished to draw the beer, and returned with two glasses for himself and Kipps.