and his associates found themselves up against an unexpected and very difficult proposition.... At first Mrs. Britling had listened to Mr. Direck with an almost undivided attention, but as he had developed his opening the feast upon the blue linen table had passed on to a fresh phase that demanded more and more of her directive intelligence. The two little boys appeared suddenly at her elbows. "Shall we take the plates and get the strawberries, Mummy?" they asked simultaneously. Then one of the neat maids in the background had to be called up and instructed in undertones, and Mr. Direck saw that for the present Robinson's illuminating experience was not for her ears. A little baffled, but quite understanding how things were, he turned to his neighbour on his left.... The girl really had an extraordinarily pretty smile, and there was something in her soft bright brown eye--like the movement of some quick little bird. And--she was like somebody he knew! Indeed she was. She was quite ready to be spoken to. "I was telling Mrs. Britling," said Mr. Direck, "what a very great privilege I esteem it to meet Mr. Britling in this highly familiar way." "You've not met him before?" "I missed him by twenty-four hours when he came through Boston on the last occasion. Just twenty-four hours. It was a matter of very great regret to me." "I wish I'd been paid to travel round the world." "You must write things like Mr. Britling and then Mr. Kahn will send you." "Don't you think if I promised well?" "You'd have to write some promissory notes, I think--just to convince him it was all right." The young lady reflected on Mr. Britling's good fortune. "He saw India. He saw Japan. He had weeks in Egypt. And he went right across America." Mr. Direck had already begun on the liner to adapt himself to the hopping inconsecutiveness of English conversation. He made now what he felt was quite a good hop, and he dropped his voice to a confidential undertone. (It was probably Adam in his first conversation with Eve, who discovered the pleasantness of dropping into a confidential undertone beside a pretty ear with a pretty wave of hair above it.) "It was in India, I presume," murmured Mr. Direck, "that Mr. Britling made the acquaintance of the coloured gentleman?" "Coloured gentleman!" She gave a swift glance down the table as though she expected to see something purple with yellow spots. "Oh, that is one of Mr. Lawrence Carmine's young men!" she explained even more confidentially and with an air of discussing the silver bowl of roses before him. "He's a great authority on Indian literature, he belongs to a society for making things pleasant for Indian students in London, and he has them down." "And Mr. Lawrence Carmine?" he pursued. Even more intimately and confidentially she indicated Mr. Carmine, as it seemed by a motion of her eyelash.