“Nonsense, Letts! Can’t you keep Scripture out of the argument?”
“I tell you, sir, I saw things in the Ashantee country that made me feel certain that the archfiend made that region his headquarters many years ago, and that he has devoted himself ever since to the training of the inhabitants. They are his chosen people. If you had seen the unspeakable things that I saw during my six months in Ashantee, you would hold to my belief that the people have been taught by Satan himself, and that they have gone one better than their instructor. No, sir, I’ll not dine with Koomadhi.”
Commander Hope shook his head.
“You’re very pig-headed, Letts,” he remarked; “but we won’t quarrel. I’ll see if I can make Gertrude understand how it is you refuse her invitation.”
“I hope to heaven that she’ll never get a glimpse of the real negro, sir—the negro with his lacquer scratched off.”
The Commissioner laughed.
“I’ll not tell her that, Letts,” he said.
Letts did not laugh.
It was really Gertrude who had suggested inviting Dr Koomadhi to dinner at the Residency. He had frequently partaken of the refreshment of tea in her drawing-room, but she knew that tea counts for nothing in the social scale even at Picotee: it conferred no more distinction upon one than a presentation at the White House does upon a citizen of the United States, or a citizen’s wife or sister. He had never been asked to dine at the Commissioner’s table, and that she knew to be a distinction, and one which he would be certain to value.
But when she suggested to her father that there would be a certain gracefulness in the act of inviting Dr Koomadhi to dinner, she found her suggestion treated with that form of contumely known as the snub. Her father had looked at her sternly and walked away, saying—