b and a pointed end. He had been too German for
belief. "Herr Heinrich!" Mr. Britling had said, and straightway the
heels had clashed together for a bow, a bow from the waist, a bow that a
heedless old lady much burthened with garden produce had greatly
disarranged. From first to last amidst our off-hand English ways Herr
Heinrich had kept his bow--and always it had been getting disarranged.

That had been his constant effect; a little stiff, a little absurd, and
always clean and pink and methodical. The boys had liked him without
reserve, Mrs. Britling had liked him; everybody had found him a likeable
creature. He never complained of anything except picnics. But he did
object to picnics; to the sudden departure of the family to wild
surroundings for the consumption of cold, knifeless and forkless meals
in the serious middle hours of the day. He protested to Mr. Britling,
respectfully but very firmly. It was, he held, implicit in their
understanding that he should have a cooked meal in the middle of the
day. Otherwise his Magen was perplexed and disordered. In the evening he
could not eat with any gravity or profit....

Their disposition towards under-feeding and a certain lack of fine
sentiment were the only flaws in the English scheme that Herr Heinrich
admitted. He certainly found the English unfeeling. His heart went even
less satisfied than his Magen. He was a being of expressive affections;
he wanted great friendships, mysterious relationships, love. He tried
very bravely to revere and to understand and be occultly understood by
Mr. Britling; he sought long walks and deep talks with Hugh and the
small boys; he tried to fill his heart with Cissie; he found at last
marvels of innocence and sweetness in the Hickson girl. She wore her
hair in a pigtail when first he met her, and it made her almost
Marguerite. This young man had cried aloud for love, warm and filling,
like the Mittagsessen that was implicit in their understanding. And all
these Essex people failed to satisfy him; they were silent, they were
subtle, they slipped through the fat yet eager fingers of his heart, so
that he fell back at last upon himself and his German correspondents and
the idealisation of Maud Hickson and the moral education of Billy.
Billy. Mr. Britling's memories came back at last to the figure of young
Heinrich with the squirrel on his shoulder, that had so often stood in
the way of the utter condemnation of Germany. That, seen closely