Mr. Britling did not look at all as Mr. Direck had expected him to look.
He had expected an Englishman in a country costume of golfing tweeds,
like the Englishman in country costume one sees in American illustrated
stories. Drooping out of the country costume of golfing tweeds he had
expected to see the mildly unhappy face, pensive even to its drooping
moustache, with which Mr. Britling's publisher had for some faulty and
unfortunate reason familiarised the American public. Instead of this,
Mr. Britling was in a miscellaneous costume, and mildness was the last
quality one could attribute to him. His moustache, his hair, his
eyebrows bristled; his flaming freckled face seemed about to bristle
too. His little hazel eyes came out with a "ping" and looked at Mr.
Direck. Mr. Britling was one of a large but still remarkable class of
people who seem at the mere approach of photography to change their
hair, their clothes, their moral natures. No photographer had ever
caught a hint of his essential Britlingness and bristlingness. Only the
camera could ever induce Mr. Britling to brush his hair, and for the
camera alone did he reserve that expression of submissive martyrdom Mr.
Direck knew. And Mr. Direck was altogether unprepared for a certain
casualness of costume that sometimes overtook Mr. Britling. He was
wearing now a very old blue flannel blazer, no hat, and a pair of
knickerbockers, not tweed breeches but tweed knickerbockers of a
remarkable bagginess, and made of one of those virtuous socialistic
homespun tweeds that drag out into woolly knots and strings wherever
there is attrition. His stockings were worsted and wrinkled, and on his
feet were those extraordinary slippers of bright-coloured bast-like
interwoven material one buys in the north of France. These were purple
with a touch of green. He had, in fact, thought of the necessity of
meeting Mr. Direck at the station at the very last moment, and had come
away from his study in the clothes that had happened to him when he got
up. His face wore the amiable expression of a wire-haired terrier