"I'm afraid I'm guilty now and then."
"But you are ashamed afterward? Why? Lies are necessary, since people are such fools!"
Tom Tripe interrupted, wiping the inside of his tunic collar again with a big bandanna handkerchief.
"How do you know the commissioner is coming, Your Ladyship? Phew! You'd better hide! I'll have to answer too many questions as it is. He'd turn you outside in!"
"There is no hurry," said Yasmini. "He will not be here for five minutes and he is a fool in any case. He is walking his horse up-hill."
Tess too had seen the beggar on the rock remove his ragged turban, rewind it, and then leisurely remove himself from sight. The system of signals was pretty obviously simple. The whole intriguing East is simple, if one only has simplicity enough to understand it.
"Can your horse be seen from the road?" Yasmini asked.
"No, miss. The saises are attending to him under the neem-trees at the rear."
"Then ask the memsahib's permission to pass through the house and leave by the back way."
Tess, more amused than ever, nodded consent and clapped her hands for Chamu to come and do the honors.