“They’ll say of you, ma’am, afterward that you don’t know better than ask Tripe and his vulgar dog to meet nice people.”

“They’ll be right, Tom.  I don’t know better.  I hope they’ll say it to me, that’s all.”

But Tess discovered when the day came that no American can scandalize the English.  They simply don’t expect an American to know bow to behave, and Tom Tripe and his marvelous performing dog were accepted and approved of as sincerely as the real American ice-cream soda—­ and forgotten as swiftly the morning following.

The commissioner was actually glad to meet Tripe in the circumstances.  If the man should suppose that because Sir Roland Samson and a judge of appeal engaged in a three-cornered conversation with him at a garden party, therefore either of them would speak to the maharajah’s drill-master when next they should meet in public, he might guess again, that was all.

One of the things the commissioner asked Tripe was whether he was responsible for the mounting of palace guards—­of course not improperly inquisitive about the maharajah’s personal affairs but anxious to seem interested in the fellow’s daily round, since just then one couldn’t avoid him.

“In a manner, and after a fashion, yes, sir.  I’m responsible that routine goes on regularly and that the men on duty know their business.”

“Ah.  Nothing like responsibility.  Good for a man.  Some try to avoid it, but it’s good.  So you look after the guard on all the palaces?  The Princess Yasmini’s too, eh?  Well, well; I can imagine that might be nervous work.  They say that young lady is—!  Eh, Tripe?”

“I couldn’t say, sir.  My duties don’t take me inside the palace.”

“Now, now, Tripe!  No use trying to look innocent!  They tell me she’s a handful and you encourage her!”

“Some folks don’t care what they say, sir.”

“If she should be in trouble I dare say, now, you’d be the man she’d apply to for help.”

“I’d like to think that, sir.”

“Might ask you to take a letter for instance, to me or his honor the judge here?”

The judge walked away.  He did not care to be mixed up in intrigue, even hypothetically, and especially with a member of the lower orders.

“I’d do for her what I’d do for a daughter of my own, sir, neither more nor less.”

“Quite so, Tripe.  If she gave you a letter to bring to me, you’d bring it, eh?”

“Excepting barratry, the ten commandments, earthquake and the act of God, sir, yes.”

“Without the maharajah knowing?”

“Without his highness knowing.”

“You’d do that with a clear conscience, eh?”

Tom Tripe screwed his face up, puffed his cheeks, and struck a very military attitude.

“A soldier’s got no business with a conscience, sir.  Conscience makes a man squeamish o’ doing right for fear his wife’s second cousin might tell the neighbors.”