When I got back to my room, my hostess and her sister came and sat with me while I unpacked my trunk and applied cold cream to my sunburnt skin.  They were afraid that I should be triste because I was so far from home and alone, and they inquired if I wanted a woman servant to sleep in my room at night.  I was quite unconscious that this was an effort to rehabilitate their conception of the creature feminine and the violated proprieties; and my indignant disclaimer of anything bordering on nervousness did not raise me in their estimation.

They left me finally in time to permit me to dress and gain the sala when the bugles sounded retreat.  The atmosphere was golden-moted—­swimming in the incomparable amber of a tropical evening.  The river slipped along, giving the sense of rest and peace which water in shadow always imparts, and as the long-drawn-out notes were caught and flung back by the echo from the mountains, the flag fluttered down as if reluctant to leave so gentle a scene.  When the “Angelus” rang just afterwards, it was as if some benignant fairy had waved her wand over the land to hold it at its sweetest moment.  The criss-crossing crowds on the plaza paused for a reverent moment; the people in the room stood up, and when the bell stopped ringing, said briskly to me and to one another, “Good evening.”  Then the members of the family approached its oldest representative and kissed his hand.  It was all very pretty and very effective.

Afterwards we went out for a walk—­at least they invited me to go for a walk, though it was a party to which we were bound.  Filipinos, being devout Catholics, have a fashion of naming their children after the saints, and, instead of celebrating the children’s birthdays, celebrate the saints’ days.  As there is a saint for every day in the year, and some to spare, and it is a point of pride with every one of any social pretension whatever to be at home to his friends on his patron saint’s day, and to do that which we vulgarly term “set ’em up” most liberally, there is more social diversion going on in a small Filipino town than would be found in one of corresponding size in America.  At these functions the crowd is apt to be thickest from four till eight, the official calling hours in the Philippines.

Starting out, therefore, at half-past six, we found the parlors of the house well thronged.  At the head of the stairs was a sort of anteroom filled with men smoking.  This antesala, as they call it, gave on the sala, or drawing-room proper, which was a large apartment lighted by a hanging chandelier of cut glass, holding about a dozen petroleum lamps.  Two rows of chairs, facing each other, were occupied by ladies in silken skirts of brilliant hues, and in camisas and panuelos of delicate embroidered or hand-painted pina.  We made a solemn entry, and passed up the aisle doing a sort of Roger de Coverley figure in turning first to one side and