n costumes; the feeling of the company was that Mr. Carmine was a
mullah. The aunt-like lady with the noble nose stood out amidst these
levities in a black silk costume with a gold chain. She refused, it
seemed, to make herself absurd, though she encouraged the others to
extravagance by nods and enigmatical smiles. Nevertheless she had put
pink ribbons in her cap. A family of father, golden-haired mother, and
two young daughters, sympathetically attired, had just arrived, and were
discarding their outer wrappings with the assistance of host and
hostess.

It was all just exactly what Mr. Direck had never expected in England,
and equally unexpected was the supper on a long candle-lit table without
a cloth. No servants were present, but on a sideboard stood a cold
salmon and cold joints and kalter aufschnitt and kartoffel salat, and a
variety of other comestibles, and many bottles of beer and wine and
whisky. One helped oneself and anybody else one could, and Mr. Direck
did his best to be very attentive to Mrs. Britling and Miss Corner, and
was greatly assisted by the latter.

Everybody seemed unusually gay and bright-eyed. Mr. Direck found
something exhilarating and oddly exciting in all this unusual bright
costume and in this easy mutual service; it made everybody seem franker
and simpler. Even Mr. Britling had revealed a sturdy handsomeness that
had not been apparent to Mr. Direck before, and young Britling left no
doubts now about his good looks. Mr. Direck forgot his mission and his
position, and indeed things generally, in an irrational satisfaction
that his golden pheasants harmonised with the glitter of the warm and
smiling girl beside him. And he sat down beside her--"You sit anywhere,"
said Mrs. Britling--with far less compunction than in his ordinary
costume he would have felt for so direct a confession of preference. And
there was something in her eyes, it was quite indefinable and yet very
satisfying, that told him that now he escaped from the stern square
imperatives of his patriotic tailor in New York she had made a
discovery of him.

Everybody chattered gaily, though Mr. Direck would have found it
difficult to recall afterwards what it was they chattered about, except
that somehow he acquired the valuable knowledge that Miss Corner was
called Cecily, and her sister Letty, and then--so far old Essex custom
held--the masculine section was left for a few minutes for some
imaginary drinking, and a lighting o