le bicycles, followed after a little
interval by the German tutor. Then an enormous grey cat came slowly
across the garden court, and sat down to listen respectfully to Mr.
Britling. The afternoon sky was an intense blue, with little puff-balls
of cloud lined out across it.

Occasionally, from chance remarks of Mr. Britling's, Mr. Direck was led
to infer that his first impressions as an American visitor were being
related to his host, but as a matter of fact he was permitted to relate
nothing; Mr. Britling did all the talking. He sat beside his guest and
spirted and played ideas and reflections like a happy fountain in the
sunshine.

Mr. Direck sat comfortably, and smoked with quiet appreciation the one
after-lunch cigar he allowed himself. At any rate, if he himself felt
rather word-bound, the fountain was nimble and entertaining. He listened
in a general sort of way to the talk, it was quite impossible to follow
it thoughtfully throughout all its chinks and turnings, while his eyes
wandered about the garden and went ever and again to the flitting
tennis-players beyond the green. It was all very gay and comfortable and
complete; it was various and delightful without being in the least
_opulent_; that was one of the little secrets America had to learn. It
didn't look as though it had been made or bought or cost anything, it
looked as though it had happened rather luckily....

Mr. Britling's talk became like a wide stream flowing through Mr.
Direck's mind, bearing along momentary impressions and observations,
drifting memories of all the crowded English sights and sounds of the
last five days, filmy imaginations about ancestral names and pretty
cousins, scraps of those prepared conversational openings on Mr.
Britling's standing in America, the explanation about the lecture club,
the still incompletely forgotten purport of the Robinson anecdote....

"Nobody planned the British estate system, nobody planned the British
aristocratic system, nobody planned the confounded constitution, it came
about, it was like layer after layer wrapping round an agate, but you
see it came about so happily in a way, it so suited the climate and the
temperament of our people and our island, it was on the whole so cosy,
that our people settled down into it, you can't help settling down into
it, they had already settled down by the days of Queen Anne, and Heaven
knows if we shall ever really get away again. We're like that little
shell the