"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.
Mr. Direck prepared to be even more sotto-voce and to plumb a much profounder mystery. His eye rested on the perambulator; he leant a little nearer to the ear.... But the strawberries interrupted him.
"Strawberries!" said the young lady, and directed his regard to his left shoulder by a little movement of her head.
He found one of the boys with a high-piled plate ready to serve him.