Presently through a distant gate the two small boys were momentarily visible wheeling small but serviceable 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 Lingula, that is found in the oldest rocks and lives to-day:  it fitted its easy conditions, and it has never modified since.  Why should it?  It excretes all its disturbing forces.  Our younger sons go away and found colonial empires.  Our surplus cottage children emigrate to Australia and Canada or migrate into the towns.  It doesn’t alter this....”