-distance race.

Mamat was three years older than Busuk, and they were to be married
when she was fifteen.

At first she cried a little, for she was sad at the thought of giving
up her playmates. But then the older women told her that she could
chew betel when she was married, and her mother showed her a little
set of betel-nut boxes, for which she had sent to Singapore. Each cup
was of silver, and the box was cunningly inlaid with storks and cherry
blossoms. It had cost her mother a month's hard labor on the loom.

Then Mamat was not to take her back to his father's bungalow. He
had built a little one of his own, raised up on palm posts six feet
from the ground, so that she need not fear tigers or snakes or white
ants. Its sides were of plaited palm leaves, every other one colored
differently, and its roof was of the choicest attap, each leaf bent
carefully over a rod of rattan, and stitched so evenly that not a
drop of rain could get through.

Inside there was a room especially for her, with its sides hung
with sarongs, and by the window was a loom made of kamooning wood,
finer than her mother's. Outside, under the eaves, was a house of
bent rattan for her ring-doves, and a shelf where her silver-haired
monkey could sun himself.

So Busuk forgot her grief, and she watched with ill-concealed eagerness
the coming of Mamat's friends with presents of tobacco and rice and
bone-tipped krises. Then for the first time she was permitted to open
the camphor-wood chest and gaze upon all the beautiful things that
she was to wear for the one great day.

Her mother and elder sisters had been married in them, and their
children would, one after another, be married in them after her.

There was a sarong of silk, run with threads of gold and silver, that
was large enough to go around her body twice and wide enough to hang
from her waist to her ankles; a belt of silver, with a gold plate
in front, to hold the sarong in place; a kabaya, or outer garment,
that looked like a dressing-gown, and was fastened down the front with
golden brooches of curious Malayan workmanship; a pair of red-tipped
sandals; and a black lace scarf to wear about her black hair. There
were earrings and a necklace of colored glass, and armlets, bangles,
and gold pins. They all dazzled Busuk, and she could hardly wait to
try them on.

A buffalo was sacrificed on the day of the ceremony. The animal was
"without blemish or disease." The men were careful