drooping to her knees and beyond them into the
shadow was a strip of heavy, deep-blue silk. All down its length were
stitched small, round dots of dark red. Peter knew this for a sarong,
an ornamental waist-sash, affected by most Javanese gentlemen and many
Australians and New Zealanders.

While he hesitated, she laid this in his lap with a shy impulsiveness.

"It is yours, sar," she informed Peter in English of a very strange
mold. She spoke in a rather high-pitched, bell-like voice, pure and
soft, and tinkling with queer little cadences. "It is yours, sar. I
made it for you."

Indubitably the girl was Eurasian. Asiatic features predominated, with
the exception of her eyes, which were more round than oblique, from
which circumstance Peter could surmise that her Aryan blood, provided
she was a half-caste, came from her mother's side; the predominance of
the Mongolian in her features being due to an Asiatic father, a Chinese.

The colorless face, relieved by the bright color of her lips, the
slightly oblique eyes, told him that; yet her accents were those of a
Javanese, a Malay from the south.

"You made this--for me?" replied Peter, surprised.

"Oh, yes, sar," said the tinkling little voice.

"Well, that is fine. It is beautiful," he said, feeling his way with
prudence. "And how much do I owe you, small one?"

She shook her head indignantly.

"It is a geeft," she informed him. "I am no longer poor, my lord. I
can now give geefts. I like you. I give this to you."

Peter was moved momentarily beyond speech.

"You are very fine, _busar satu_," went on the tiny, musical voice.
"So is this sarong. You will wear it, great one, around thy middle?"

"Around my middle, to be sure, small one," laughed Peter; "until my
middle is clay, or until the sarong is no more than a thread."

"Well said, _busar satu_!" The girl giggled, bobbing her small head in
happy approval. "It is twice blessed: with my love and with my foolish
blood, for I pricked my finger on the wicked needle. But I covered
that spot with a red mata-ari (sun). You can never, never tell."

"Assuredly not!" cried Peter gaily.

"Let the sarong be wound about thy middle," commanded the Chinese
maiden. "Arise, sar, and wind it about thy middle."

And Peter did rise, winding the sarong about his lean waist twice,
allowing one end to dangle down on his left side in a debonair and
striking fashion. If set off his slim figure in a rather b