they do really think for themselves. Almost fiercely. So does Teddy. If
he thinks he hasn't thought anything he thinks for himself, he goes off
and thinks it different. The sister is a teacher who wants to take the
B.A. degree in London University. Meanwhile she pays the penalty of her
sex."

"Meaning--?" asked Mr. Direck, startled.

"Oh! that she puts in a great deal too much of her time upon housework
and minding her sister's baby."

"She's a very interesting and charming young lady indeed," said Mr.
Direck. "With a sort of Western college freedom of mind--and something
about her that isn't American at all."

Mr. Britling was following the train of his own thoughts.

"My household has some amusing contrasts," he said. "I don't know if you
have talked to that German.

"He's always asking questions. And you tell him any old thing and he
goes and writes it down in his room upstairs, and afterwards asks you
another like it in order to perplex himself by the variety of your
answers. He regards the whole world with a methodical distrust. He wants
to document it and pin it down. He suspects it only too justly of
disorderly impulses, and a capacity for self-contradiction. He is the
most extraordinary contrast to Teddy, whose confidence in the universe
amounts almost to effrontery. Teddy carries our national laxness to a
foolhardy extent. He is capable of leaving his watch in the middle of
Claverings Park and expecting to find it a month later--being carefully