and the salute repeated as Lord and Lady Roberts stepped out of the carriage.
The explanation was that the judge had gone to bed: his butler supposed that the rest of the household would follow his example, and so had counter-ordered the carriage. When the mistake was discovered there was a further delay while the coachman and syces reharnessed the horses, and they were late in starting.
In 1875 King Edward VII., as Prince of Wales, spent a night at the judge's house. Mr. Forster Webster had the honour of receiving him. Special preparations were made, and the natives were much impressed with the news that the son of the great Queen, as they called her, was coming to Trichinopoly. Among other duties, the dhirzee was commissioned to put up new mosquito nets on the bed intended for His Royal Highness. The man set to work, and, having crowded as much material as was possible into the net, found that after all it had a very commonplace appearance; it might have been the couch of the youngest civilian in the Service. It is beyond human power to invest a mere mosquito net with a regal air or to give the fittings of an Indian bedroom a princely appearance. Whitewashed walls and matted floors are insuperable difficulties to ornate decorations of any kind. The dhirzee was a man of resource. He spent some hours in the 'evening bazaar,' otherwise known as the thieving bazaar, where he purchased several yards of cheap turkey-red and a huge secondhand pincushion. He cut up the material and formed it into a number of large rosettes, which he sewed broadcast over the mosquito netting. The pincushion was the chief ornament of the dressing-table. He called his mistress to behold his handiwork, and stood swelling with pride as she ran her eye over the scarlet excrescences on the curtains and the pincushion upon the table. The tightly stretched satin
