Mr. Britling Sees It Through by H. G. Wells Page A

clear and bright about the mind. Friday is always my worst working day.”
    Mr. Direck leaned against the table, wrapped in his golden pheasants, and appreciated the point.
    â€œYour young people dance very cheerfully,” he said.
    â€œWe all dance very cheerfully,” said Mr. Britling.
    â€œThen this Miss Corner,” said Mr. Direck, “she is the sister, I presume, is she? of that pleasant young lady who is married—she is married, isn’t she?—to the young man you call Teddy.”
    â€œI should have explained these young people. They’re the sort of young people we are producing over here now in quite enormous quantity. They are the sort of equivalent of the Russian Intelligentsia, an irresponsible middle-class with ideas. Teddy, you know, is my secretary. He’s the son, I believe, of a Kilburn solicitor. He was recommended to me by Datcher of The Times . He came down here and lived in lodgings for a time. Then suddenly appeared the young lady.”
    â€œMiss Corner’s sister?”
    â€œExactly. The village was a little startled. The cottager who had let rooms came to me privately. Teddy is rather touchy on the point of his personal independence, he considers any demand for explanations as an insult, and probably all he had said to the old lady was, ‘This is Letty—come to share my rooms.’ I putthe matter to him very gently. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said, rather in the manner of some one who has overlooked a trifle. ‘I got married to her in the Christmas holidays. May I bring her along to see Mrs. Britling?’ We induced him to go into a little cottage I rent. The wife was the daughter of a Colchester journalist and printer. I don’t know if you talked to her.”
    â€œI’ve talked to the sister rather.”
    â€œWell, they’re both idea’d. They’re highly educated in the sense that 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.”
    â€œMeaning——?” asked Mr. Direck startled.
    â€œOh! that she puts in a great deal too much of her time upon housework and minding her sister’s baby.”
    â€œShe’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.
    â€œMy household has some amusing contrasts,” he said. “I don’t know if you have talked to that German?
    â€œHe’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 afoolhardy extent. He is capable of leaving his watch in the middle of Claverings Park and expecting to find it a month later—being carefully taken care of by a squirrel, I suppose—when he happens to want it. He’s rather like a squirrel himself—without the habit of hoarding. He is incapable of asking a question about anything; he would be quite sure it was all right anyhow. He would feel that asking questions betrayed a want of confidence—was a sort of incivility. But my German, if you notice—his normal expression is one of grave solicitude. He is like a conscientious ticket-collector among his