ong glass doors. Here he was confronted by a little Burmese woman
with a beaming face. She wore a short white jacket, an extraordinarily
tight satin petticoat, or, _tamain_ of wonderful butterfly colours,
enormous gold ear-rings, and a flower stuck coquettishly behind her
left car. At first he supposed her to be a picturesque attendant, but
when she extended a tiny hand loaded with rings and murmured "Pleased
to see you!" he realised that he was addressed by the mistress of the
house.

"This is my wife," announced Salter as he entered. "Mee Lay, here's
Mr. Shafto, one of our new assistants, just out from England; I hope
you can give him a good dinner?"

"Oh yes, it will be all right," and once more she beamed upon her
guest, "I will go and see about it now."

And in spite of her tight skirt, Mee Lay glided out of the room with an
air of surpassing grace.

"I dare say you are surprised to see that Mrs. Salter is of _this
country_," said her husband, as he sank into a chair; "but it is by no
means an uncommon match here. Burmese women are very good-humoured and
capable; they make capital wives, and there is no denying the
fascination of the Burmese girl--always so piquant and smiling and
dainty. They have also a wonderful capacity for business and
money-making, and a real hunger for land; some of the best plots in and
about Rangoon have been picked up by these shrewd little creatures.
The men-folk, on the other hand, are incurably lazy. They loaf, gamble
and amuse themselves and leave their women-kind to trade, or to weave
silks and manufacture cheroots; numbers of them are in business. Mee
Lay, my wife owns and runs a good-sized rice mill; and if you were to
look into the back compound you would see it entirely surrounded by her
matted paddy-bins, biding a rise in the market."

A yet further surprise awaited Shafto, in the shape of a little sallow
girl, with clouds of crimped golden hair, beautifully dressed in
European style, in a white embroidered frock and wide silk sash.

Rosetta had inherited the high cheek-bones and short nose of her
mother's race, the blue eyes and firm jaw of her Yorkshire parent. On
the whole, she was an attractive child.

Miss Rosetta Salter received the strange gentleman with overpowering
condescension, and spoke English in a thin, squeaky voice. In a
flatteringly short time she had descended from her high horse, and
accepted Shafto as a friend, revealed her age (eight years)