feet, which made me sorry some of us
had not worn gloves. Also I was much amused to notice that after
biting even so lightly of the fruit of knowledge, most of the women
about me had drawn up the folds of the _sarongs_, tied so artlessly
around their waists, and fastened them securely under the armpits,
so that they were clothed quite decorously from shoulder to knee.

There was one beautiful little girl among the many plain ones in
Tampakan. She could not have been over ten years old, and her heavy
eyebrows were shaved into a narrow black line above magnificent
eyes, shaded by phenomenally long lashes. Her features were regular
and finely cut, her mouth being particularly pretty, and when she
smiled, which was seldom, her red lips disclosed even little teeth,
glistening and white. Her very hair, fringed heavily above her brow,
was soft and fine and hung almost to her knees in a dusky, rippling
cloud, while both tiny ears were pierced, the left one boasting an
ivory stick about the size and shape of a cigarette, and the other
a roll of red rags, which barbaric custom served only to enhance her
wildwood tropic beauty.

The child's _ena_, or mother, was evidently very proud of her daughter,
and through the interpreter, told me that within a year the little
maid was to marry a datto in a neighbouring town. A very great honour,
to be sure, and then her pretty, gleaming teeth will be blackened
and filed into an arch, her eyebrows shaved off completely, and at
twenty-five the little beauty will doubtless have been transformed
into a wrinkled, loathsome old hag, and perhaps a grandmother to boot!

At the windows of a house under which we stood, women, who for some
reason did not mingle with the others of the village, peered down at us
curiously, some holding up their _sarongs_ to cover all but the eyes,
and some frankly interested, with uncovered faces; while still other
creatures, of nightmare ugliness, their skins plastered with a white
flour paste, their eyebrows shaved, and their teeth newly blackened
and filed into shape, incurred the displeasure of their respective
lords and masters by appearing at the window even for a few moments
at a time, it not being Moro etiquette that these recent brides of
the neighbourhood should be seen until a later period.

About this time Half-a-Woman and her mother appeared on the scene, the
American child, with her golden hair and white skin, enthusing the Moro
women to the utmost, wh