printer. I don't know if you talked to her."

"I've talked to the sister rather."

"Well, they're both idea'd. They're highly educated in the sense that
they do really think for themselves. Almost fiercely. So does Teddy. If
he thinks he hasn't thought anything he thinks for himself, he goes off
and thinks it different. The sister is a teacher who wants to take the
B.A. degree in London University. Meanwhile she pays the penalty of her
sex."

"Meaning--?" asked Mr. Direck, startled.

"Oh! that she puts in a great deal too much of her time upon housework
and minding her sister's baby."

"She's a very interesting and charming young lady indeed," said Mr.
Direck. "With a sort of Western college freedom of mind--and something
about her that isn't American at all."

Mr. Britling was following the train of his own thoughts.

"My household has some amusing contrasts," he said. "I don't know if you
have talked to that German.

"He's always asking questions. And you tell him any old thing and he
goes and writes it down in his room upstairs, and afterwards asks you
another like it in order to perplex himself by the variety of your
answers. He regards the whole world with a methodical distrust. He wants
to document it and pin it down. He suspects it only too justly of
disorderly impulses, and a capacity for self-contradiction. He is the
most extraordinary contrast to Teddy, whose confidence in the universe
amounts almost to effrontery. Teddy carries our national laxness to a
foolhardy extent. He is capable of leaving his watch in the middle of
Claverings Park and expecting to find it a month later--being carefully
taken care of by a squirrel, I suppose--when he happens to want it. He's
rather like a squirrel himself--without the habit of hoarding. He is
incapable of asking a question about anything; he would be quite sure it
was all right anyhow. He would feel that asking questions betrayed a
want of confidence--was a sort of incivility. But my German, if you
notice,--his normal expression is one of grave solicitude. He is like a
conscientious ticket-collector among his impressions. And did you notice
how beautifully my pianola rolls are all numbered and catalogued? He did
that. He set to work and did it as soon as he got here, just as a good
cat when you bring it into the house sets to work and catches mice.
Previously the pianola music was chaos. You took what God sent you.

"And he _looks_ like a German," said Mr. Bri