“Maybe.  But there’s some skate looking at you from the garden.  What’s the matter with your kimono?”

However the dawn wind was delicious, and the night-gown more decent than some of the affairs they label frocks.  Besides, the East is used to more or less nakedness and thinks no evil of it, as women learn quicker than men.

“All right—­in a minute.”

“I’ll bet there’s a speculator charging ’em admission at the gate,” grumbled Dick Blaine, coming to stand beside her in pajamas.  “Sure you’re right, Tess; those are swans, and that’s a dawn worth seeing.”

He had the deep voice that the East attributes to manliness, and the muscular mold that never came of armchair criticism.  She looked like a child beside him, though he was agile, athletic, wiry, not enormous.

“Sahib!” resumed the voices.  “Sahib!  Protector of the poor!” They whined out of darkness still, but the shadow was shortening.

“Better feed ’em, Tess.  A man’s starved down mighty near the knuckle if he’ll wake up this early to beg.”

“Nonsense.  Those are three regular bums who look on us as their preserve.  They enjoy the morning as much as we do.  Begging’s their way of telling people howdy.”

“Somebody pays them to come,” he grumbled, helping her into a pale blue kimono.

Tess laughed.  “Sure!  But it pays us too.  They keep other bums away.  I talk to them sometimes.”

“In English?”

“I don’t think they know any.  I’m learning their language.”

It was his turn to laugh.  “I knew a man once who learned the gipsy bolo on a bet.  Before he’d half got it you couldn’t shoo tramps off his door-step with a gun.  After a time he grew to like it—­flattered him, I suppose, but decent folk forgot to ask him to their corn-roasts.  Careful, Tess, or Sialpore’ll drop us from its dinner lists.”

“Don’t you believe it!  They’re crazy to learn American from me, and to hear your cowpuncher talk.  We’re social lions.  I think they like us as much as we like them.  Don’t make that face, Dick, one maverick isn’t a whole herd, and you can’t afford to quarrel with the commissioner.”

He chose to change the subject.

“What are your bums’ names?” he asked.

“Funny names.  Bimbu, Umra and Pinga.  Now you can see them, look, the shadow’s gone.  Bimbu is the one with no front teeth, Umra has only one eye, and Pinga winks automatically.  Wait till you see Pinga smile.  It’s diagonal instead of horizontal.  Must have hurt his mouth in an accident.”

“Probably he and Bimbu fought and found the biting tough.  Speaking of dogs, strikes me we ought to keep a good big fierce one,” be added suggestively.

“No, no, Dick; there’s no danger.  Besides, there’s Chamu.”

“The bums could make short work of that parasite.”

“I’m safe enough.  Tom Tripe usually looks in at least once a day when you’re gone.”