Chapter 1

BOOK I

MATCHING'S EASY AT EASE

CHAPTER THE FIRST

MR. DIRECK VISITS MR. BRITLING

Section 1

It was the sixth day of Mr. Direck's first visit to England, and he was
at his acutest perception of differences. He found England in every way
gratifying and satisfactory, and more of a contrast with things American
than he had ever dared to hope.

He had promised himself this visit for many years, but being of a sunny
rather than energetic temperament--though he firmly believed himself
to be a reservoir of clear-sighted American energy--he had allowed all
sorts of things, and more particularly the uncertainties of Miss Mamie
Nelson, to keep him back. But now there were no more uncertainties about
Miss Mamie Nelson, and Mr. Direck had come over to England just to
convince himself and everybody else that there were other interests
in life for him than Mamie....

And also, he wanted to see the old country from which his maternal
grandmother had sprung. Wasn't there even now in his bedroom in New York
a water-colour of Market Saffron church, where the dear old lady had
been confirmed? And generally he wanted to see Europe. As an interesting
side show to the excursion he hoped, in his capacity of the rather
underworked and rather over-salaried secretary of the Massachusetts
Society for the Study of Contemporary Thought, to discuss certain
agreeable possibilities with Mr. Britling, who lived at Matching's Easy.

Mr. Direck was a type of man not uncommon in America. He was very much
after the fashion of that clean and pleasant-looking person one sees in
the advertisements in American magazines, that agreeable person who
smiles and says, "Good, it's the Fizgig Brand," or "Yes, it's a Wilkins,
and that's the Best," or "My shirt-front never rucks; it's a Chesson."
But now he was saying, still with the same firm smile, "Good. It's
English." He was pleased by every unlikeness to things American, by
every item he could hail as characteristic; in the train to London he
had laughed aloud with pleasure at the chequer-board of little fields
upon the hills of Cheshire, he had chuckled to find himself in a
compartment without a corridor; he had tipped the polite yet kindly
guard magnificently, after doubting for a moment whether he ought to tip
him at all, and he had gone about his hotel in London saying "Lordy!
Lordy! My _word!_" in a kind of ecstasy, verifying the delightful
absence of telephone, of steam-heat, of any dependent bathroom. At
breakfast the waiter (out of Dickens it seemed) had refused to know what
"cereals" were, and had given him his egg in a china egg-cup such as you
see in the pictures in _Punch_. The Thames,