"Shall I look about for a 'ansom, sir?" he inquired with perfect gravity.
St. George hardly heard.
"It's like cutting into a great, smooth sheet of white paper," he said whimsically, "and making any figure you want to make."
Before they reached the bottom of the steps they divined, issuing from an isolated, temple-seeming building below, a train of sober-liveried attendants, all at first glance resembling Jarvo and Akko. These defiled leisurely toward the strangers and lined up irregularly at the foot of the steps.
"Enter Trouble," said Amory happily.
They found themselves confronting, in the midst of the attendants, an olive man with no angles, whose face, in spite of its health and even wealth of contour, was ridiculously grave, as if the papier-mâché man in the down-town window should have had a sudden serious thought just before his papier-mâché incarnation.
"Permit me," said the man in perfect English and without bowing, "to bring to you the greeting of his Highness, Prince Tabnit, and his welcome to Yaque. I am Cassyrus, an officer of the government. At the command of his Highness I am come to conduct you to the palace."
"The prince is most kind," said St. George, and added eagerly: "He is returned, then?"
"Assuredly. Three days ago," was the reply.
"And the king—is he returned?" asked St. George.