He smiled a little and bowed.
"Would you mind, sir," he said, "if you did not give me anything?
I assure you, sir, that I'd very much rather that you wouldn't give me anything." And with this he bowed and rapidly disappeared.
"Well," said I, to myself, as I put my money back into my pocket, "it is a queer country, this Cathay." As I approached the lodge, I felt that perhaps I had received a lesson, but I was not sure.

I would wait and let circumstances decide.
The gardener was away attending to his duties; but his wife was there, and when she came forward, with a frank, cheery greeting, I instantly decided that I had had a lesson.

I thanked her, as earnestly as I knew how, for what she had done for me, and then I added: "You and your husband have treated me with such kind hospitality that I am not going to offer you anything in return for what you have done." "You would have hurt us, sir, if you had," said she.
Then, in order to change the subject, I spoke of the honor which had been bestowed upon me by being allowed to wear the Duke's dressing-gown.

She smiled, and replied: "Honors would always be easy for you, sir, if you only chose to take them." As I rode away I thought that the last remark of the gardener's wife seemed to show a mental brightness above her station, although I did not know exactly what she meant.

"Can it be," I asked myself, "that she fancies that good family, six feet of athletic muscle, and no money would be considered sufficient to make matrimonial honors easy on that estate ?" If such an idea had come into her head, it certainly was a very foolish one, and I determined to drive it from my mind by thinking of something else.
Suddenly I slackened my speed.