And yet this was only forty-two miles from London.  Surely it brought things within the suburban range.  If Matching’s Easy were in America, commuters would live there.  But in supposing that, Mr. Direck displayed his ignorance of a fact of the greatest importance to all who would understand England.  There is a gap in the suburbs of London.  The suburbs of London stretch west and south and even west by north, but to the north-eastward there are no suburbs; instead there is Essex.  Essex is not a suburban county; it is a characteristic and individualised county which wins the heart.  Between dear 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.