ear Essex and the centre of things lie
two great barriers, the East End of London and Epping Forest. Before a
train could get to any villadom with a cargo of season-ticket holders it
would have to circle about this rescued woodland and travel for twenty
unprofitable miles, and so once you are away from the main Great Eastern
lines Essex still lives in the peace of the eighteenth century, and
London, the modern Babylon, is, like the stars, just a light in the
nocturnal sky. In Matching's Easy, as Mr. Britling presently explained
to Mr. Direck, there are half-a-dozen old people who have never set eyes
on London in their lives--and do not want to.

"Aye-ya!"

"Fussin' about thea."

"Mr. Robinson, 'e went to Lon', 'e did. That's 'ow 'e 'urt 'is fut."

Mr. Direck had learnt at the main-line junction that he had to tell the
guard to stop the train for Matching's Easy; it only stopped "by
request"; the thing was getting better and better; and when Mr. Direck
seized his grip and got out of the train there was just one little old
Essex station-master and porter and signalman and everything, holding a
red flag in his hand and talking to Mr. Britling about the cultivation
of the sweet peas which glorified the station. And there was the Mr.
Britling who was the only item of business and the greatest expectation
in Mr. Direck's European journey, and he was quite unlike the portraits
Mr. Direck had seen and quite unmistakably Mr. Britling all the same,
since there was nobody else upon the platform, and he was advancing with
a gesture of welcome.

"Did you ever see such peas, Mr. Dick?" said Mr. Britling by way of
introduction.

"My _word_," said Mr. Direck in a good old Farmer Hayseed kind of voice.

"Aye-ya!" said the station-master in singularly strident tones. "It be a
rare year for sweet peas," and then he slammed the door of the carriage
in a leisurely manner and did dismissive things with his flag, while the
two gentlemen took stock, as people say, of one another.

Section 3

Except in the doubtful instance of Miss Mamie Nelson, Mr. Direck's habit
was good fortune. Pleasant things came to him. Such was his position as
the salaried secretary of this society of thoughtful Massachusetts
business men to which allusion has been made. Its purpose was to bring
itself expeditiously into touch with the best thought of the age.

Too busily occupied with practical realities to follow the thought of
the age through all its di