w he doesn't go anywhere
else. He may be a poor churchman, but anyhow he's not a dissenter...."

"In England, you see," Mr. Britling remarked, after they had parted from
the reverend gentleman, "we have domesticated everything. We have even
domesticated God."

For awhile Mr. Britling showed Mr. Direck English lanes, and then came
back along narrow white paths across small fields of rising wheat, to
the village and a little gate that led into the park.

"Well," said Mr. Direck, "what you say about domestication does seem to
me to be very true indeed. Why! even those clouds up there look as
though they had a shepherd and were grazing."

"Ready for shearing almost," said Mr. Britling.

"Indeed," said Mr. Direck, raising his voice a little, "I've seen
scarcely anything in England that wasn't domesticated, unless it was
some of your back streets in London."

Mr. Britling seemed to reflect for a moment. "They're an excrescence,"
he said....

Section 3

The park had a trim wildness like nature in an old Italian picture;
dappled fallow deer grouped close at hand and looked at the two men
fearlessly; the path dropped through oak trees and some stunted bracken
to a little loitering stream, that paused ever and again to play at
ponds and waterfalls and bear a fleet of water-lily leaves; and then
their way curved round in an indolent sweep towards the cedars and
shrubberies of the great house. The house looked low and extensive to an
American eye, and its red-brick chimneys rose like infantry in open
order along its extended line. There was a glimpse of flower-bright
garden and terraces to the right as they came round the corner to the
front of the house through a path cut in the laurel bushes.

Mr. Britling had a moment of exposition as they approached the entrance.

"I expect we shall find Philbert from the Home Office--or is it the
Local Government Board?--and Sir Thomas Loot, the Treasury man. There
may be some other people of that sort, the people we call the Governing
Class. Wives also. And I rather fancy the Countess of Frensham is
coming, she's strong on the Irish Question, and Lady Venetia
Trumpington, who they say is a beauty--I've never seen her. It's Lady
Homartyn's way to expect me to come in--not that I'm an important item
at these week-end social feasts--but she likes to see me on the
table--to be nibbled at if any one wants to do so--like the olives and
the salted almonds. And she always asks me to lun