rooms that England favours.  Bookshelves and stuffed birds comforted the landing outside his bedroom.  He descended to find the hall occupied by a small bright bristling boy in white flannel shirt and knickerbockers and bare legs and feet.  He stood before the vacant open fireplace in an attitude that Mr. Direck knew instantly was also Mr. Britling’s.  “Lunch is in the garden,” the Britling scion proclaimed, “and I’ve got to fetch you.  And, I say! is it true?  Are you American?”

“Why surely,” said Mr. Direck.

“Well, I know some American,” said the boy.  “I learnt it.”

“Tell me some,” said Mr. Direck, smiling still more amiably.

“Oh!  Well—­God darn you!  Ouch, Gee-whizz!  Soak him, Maud!  It’s up to you, Duke....”

“Now where did you learn all that?” asked Mr. Direck recovering.

“Out of the Sunday Supplement,” said the youthful Britling.

“Why!  Then you know all about Buster Brown,” said Mr. Direck.  “He’s Fine—­eh?”

The Britling child hated Buster Brown.  He regarded Buster Brown as a totally unnecessary infant.  He detested the way he wore his hair and the peculiar cut of his knickerbockers and—­him.  He thought Buster Brown the one drop of paraffin in the otherwise delicious feast of the Sunday Supplement.  But he was a diplomatic child.

“I think I like Happy Hooligan better,” he said.  “And dat ole Maud.”

He reflected with joyful eyes, Buster clean forgotten.  “Every week,” he said, “she kicks some one.”

It came to Mr. Direck as a very pleasant discovery that a British infant could find a common ground with the small people at home in these characteristically American jests.  He had never dreamt that the fine wine of Maud and Buster could travel.

“Maud’s a treat,” said the youthful Britling, relapsing into his native tongue.

Mr. Britling appeared coming to meet them.  He was now in a grey flannel suit—­he must have jumped into it—­and altogether very much tidier....

Section 9

The long narrow table under the big sycamores between the house and the adapted barn that Mr. Direck learnt was used for “dancing and all that sort of thing,” was covered with a blue linen diaper cloth, and that too surprised him.  This was his first meal in a private household in England, and for obscure reasons he had expected something very stiff and formal with “spotless napery.”  He had also expected a very stiff and capable service by implacable parlourmaids, and the whole thing indeed highly genteel.  But two cheerful women servants appeared from what was presumably the kitchen direction, wheeling a curious wicker erection, which his small guide informed him was called Aunt Clatter—­manifestly deservedly—­and which bore on its shelves the substance of the meal.  And while the maids at this migratory sideboard carved and opened bottles and so forth, the small boy and a slightly larger brother, assisted a little by two young men of no very defined position and relationship, served the company.  Mrs. Britling sat at the head of the table, and conversed with Mr. Direck by means of hostess questions and imperfectly accepted answers while she kept a watchful eye on the proceedings.