news, or, in fact, of insisting on accurate information if it can be obtained.  They are ready to say anything at a minute’s notice.  A friend of mine in Ilocos Norte once lost a ring, and asked her servant if he knew anything about it.  The boy replied instantly, “Seguro raton,” which is an elliptical form of “Surely a rat ate it.”  The boy had not stolen the ring, but he jumped at anything to head off complaint or investigation.

Time is apparently of no value in the Philippines.  On the second day of our stay in Iloilo the Treasurer sent up two pieces of furniture for our use, a wardrobe and a table.  They were delivered just before lunch, about ten o’clock, and the Treasurer would not be at home to sign for them till nearly one.  When I came in from a shopping expedition, I found eight or ten taos sitting placidly on their heels in the front yard, while the two pieces of new furniture were lying in the mud just as they had been dumped when the bearers eased their shoulders from the poles.  The noonday heat waxed fiercer, and the Treasurer was delayed, but nobody displayed any impatience.  The men continued to sit on their heels, to chew their betel nut, and to smoke their cigars, and, I verily believe, would have watched the sun set before they would have left.  In an hour or so the Treasurer appeared, and settled the account, the taos picked up the furniture and deposited it in the house, and the object lesson was over.

In spite of shopping, time hung somewhat heavy on our hands at Iloilo.  We made few acquaintances, for there were few civilian women, and the army ladies, so we were informed, looked askance at schoolteachers, and had determined that we were not to be admitted into “society.”  The army nurses asked us to five o’clock tea, and we went and enjoyed it.  They were, for the most part, gentlewomen born, and the self-sacrifice of their daily lives had accentuated their native refinement.  I have few remembrances more pleasant than those of the half-hour we spent in their cool sala.  As for the tea they gave us and the delicious toast, mere words are inadequate to describe them.  We became sensible that the art of cooking had not vanished from the earth.  After the garbanzos and the bescochos and the guava jelly, how good they tasted!

In the course of two or three days we were notified that the vapor General Blanco would leave for Capiz on Saturday at five P.M., and some ten or twelve of us, destined for the province of that name, made ready to depart.  I was the only woman in the party, but our Division Superintendent, who was personally conducting us and who was having some little difficulty with his charges, assured me that I was a deal less worry to him than some of the men were.  I told him that I was quite equal to getting myself and my luggage aboard the Blanco.  I had employed a native servant who said he knew how to cook, and I was taking him up to Capiz with an eye to future comfort.  Romoldo went out and got a carabao cart, heaping it with my trunks, deck chair, and boxes.  I followed in a quilez, and we rattled down to the wharf in good time.