the Dower House circle until six o'clock in the evening.

Meanwhile the fountains of Mr. Britling's active and encyclopædic mind
played steadily.

He was inordinately proud of England, and he abused her incessantly. He
wanted to state England to Mr. Direck as the amiable summation of a
grotesque assembly of faults. That was the view into which the comforts
and prosperities of his middle age had brought him from a radicalism
that had in its earlier stages been angry and bitter. And for Mr.
Britling England was "here." Essex was the county he knew. He took Mr.
Direck out from his walled garden by a little door into a trim paddock
with two white goals. "We play hockey here on Sundays," he said in a way
that gave Mr. Direck no hint of the practically compulsory participation
of every visitor to Matching's Easy in this violent and dangerous
exercise, and thence they passed by a rich deep lane and into a high
road that ran along the edge of the deer park of Claverings. "We will
call in on Claverings later," said Mr. Britling. "Lady Homartyn has some
people there for the week-end, and you ought to see the sort of thing it
is and the sort of people they are. She wanted us to lunch there
to-morrow, but I didn't accept that because of our afternoon hockey."

Mr. Direck received this reason uncritically.

The village reminded Mr. Direck of Abbey's pictures. There was an inn
with a sign standing out in the road, a painted sign of the Clavering
Arms; it had a water trough (such as Mr. Weller senior ducked the
dissenter in) and a green painted table outside its inviting door. There
were also a general shop and a number of very pleasant cottages, each
marked with the Mainstay crest. All this was grouped about a green with