But when, a few days afterwards, Quong Ho drove into Water-End on a shopping expedition, and in the presence of palpitating Water-Enders carried on his business and passed remarks on the weather, polite and smiling, in the easy English of the vicar and the motoring gentlefolk, with no perceptible trace of a foreign accent, they gaped once more in amazement. Language is a marvellous solvent of prejudice. No one who talked English like the Vicar could strangle English necks. But Quong Ho, unfortunately, complicated this favourable impression by overdoing the perfect Briton. At the butcher’s door, freshly coloured as the carcasses hanging at each side, stood Gwinnie Bates, the leader of the staring crowd, blocking the way. Quong Ho, trained theoretically by Baltazar in European ceremonial, swept her a bow with his billycock hat—a bow composite of the court of Charles the Second and Ratcliffe Highway, and addressed her: “Beauteous Madam, will you allow your devoted servant the privilege of a passage?” She melted hysterically from the doorway. Her friends, like a grinning Red Sea, divided into an avenue through which passed Quong Ho, with gestures courteously expressive of thanks, followed by the butcher’s assistant carrying to the cart the leg of mutton and the joint of beef which Quong Ho had purchased. Quong Ho drove off amid unceremonial guffaws and gigglings. “Beauteous Madam! Oh, Hell!” roared the butcher’s assistant. Gwinnie Bates checked her mirth and advanced with flushed cheeks and defiant eyes. “What’s wrong about it, Johnnie Evans? If you want to insult me, say it out. If you can’t be a gentleman, at least be a man.” “Pretty fine gentleman,” sneered Johnnie Evans, jerking a thumb towards the receding Chinaman. “He can teach manners to the likes of you, at any rate,” cried Gwinnie Bates, and went off triumphant with her head in the air. Thus, through the courteous demeanour of Quong Ho on this and subsequent occasions, Water-End became divided into two camps—Sinophile and Sinophobe. The latter party asserted that such heathen smiled most when their designs were most criminal, and carried out their activities to the accompaniment of unholy mirth. Was he ever seen at church or chapel? His admirers confessed this abstention from the means of grace. Did he ever speak of the doings of his master with the outlandish name, and himself, in the middle of the moor? Quong Ho was admitted to be a museum-piece of discretion. And as time went on, although his ways were marked by the same perfect courtesy, he lost favour amongst his party, through a bland taciturnity and a polite rejection of conversational advantage. Now for this taciturnity there were excellent reasons: none other than the commands of John Baltazar. When Quong Ho returned the first time to the farm with the jeering laughter ringing in his ears, he bewailed the impoliteness of the inhabitants of Water-End. Said Baltazar in Chinese: