Mr. Britling in a black velvet cloak and black silk tights was a deeper
shade among the shadows; the high lights were Miss Corner and her
sister, in glittering garments of peacock green and silver that gave a
snake-like quality to their lithe bodies. They were talking to the
German tutor, who had become a sort of cotton Cossack, a spectacled
Cossack in buff and bright green. Mrs. Britling was dignified and
beautiful in a purple djibbah, and her stepson had become a handsome
still figure of black and crimson. Teddy had contrived something
elaborate and effective in the Egyptian style, with a fish-basket and a
cuirass of that thin matting one finds behind washstands; the small boys
were brigands, with immensely baggy breeches and cummerbunds in which
they had stuck a selection of paper-knives and toy pistols and similar
weapons. Mr. Carmine and his young man had come provided with real
Indian costumes; the feeling of the company was that Mr. Carmine was a
mullah. The aunt-like lady with the noble nose stood out amidst these
levities in a black silk costume with a gold chain. She refused, it
seemed, to make herself absurd, though she encouraged the others to
extravagance by nods and enigmatical smiles. Nevertheless she had put
pink ribbons in her cap. A family of father, golden-haired mother, and
two young daughters, sympathetically attired, had just arrived, and were
discarding their outer wrappings with the assistance of host and
hostess.

It was all just exactly what Mr. Direck had never expected in England,
and equally unexpected was the supper on a long candle-lit table without
a cloth. No servants were present, but on a sideboard stood a cold
salmon and cold joints and kalter aufschnitt and kartoffel salat, and a
variety of other comestibles, and many bottles of beer and wine and
whisky. One helped oneself and anybody else one could, and Mr. Direck
did his best to be very attentive to Mrs. Britling and Miss Corner, and