information that it was taking them away from the rest of the company.
He wanted to see more of his new-found cousin, and what the baby and the
Bengali gentleman--whom manifestly one mustn't call "coloured"--and the
large-nosed lady and all the other inexplicables would get up to.
Instead of which Mr. Britling was leading him off alone with an air of
showing him round the premises, and talking too rapidly and variously
for a question to be got in edgeways, much less any broaching of the
matter that Mr. Direck had come over to settle.

There was quite a lot of rose garden, it made the air delicious, and it
was full of great tumbling bushes of roses and of neglected standards,
and it had a long pergola of creepers and trailers and a great arbour,
and underneath over the beds everywhere, contrary to all the rules, the
blossom of a multitude of pansies and stock and little trailing plants
swarmed and crowded and scrimmaged and drilled and fought great massed
attacks. And then Mr. Britling talked their way round a red-walled
vegetable garden with an abundance of fruit trees, and through a door
into a terraced square that had once been a farmyard, outside the
converted barn. The barn doors had been replaced by a door-pierced
window of glass, and in the middle of the square space a deep tank had
been made, full of rainwater, in which Mr. Britling remarked casually
that "everybody" bathed when the weather was hot. Thyme and rosemary and
suchlike sweet-scented things grew on the terrace about the tank, and
ten trimmed little trees of _Arbor vitae_ stood sentinel. Mr. Direck was
tantalisingly aware that beyond some lilac bushes were his new-found
cousin and the kindred young woman in blue playing tennis with the
Indian and another young man, while whenever it was necessary the
large-nosed lady crossed the stage and brooded soothingly over the
perambulator. And Mr. Britling, choosing a seat from which Mr. Direck
just couldn't look comfortably through the green branches at the flying