lipina tried to conceal her disgust,
and pretended to accept my explanation that they were only a caricature
of our loved breakfast delicacy; but I could see that she thought I
was trying to cover up my newly acquired sense of national deficiency.

However, when I set up housekeeping, Romoldo was promoted to the
office of chief cook and only bottle washer. He conveyed to me a
delicate intimation that it was not proper for me to live without
a female attendant, and said that he had a friend--a young woman
lately orphaned--who needed work and would be glad to have the
position. I was sufficiently unsophisticated in Filipino ways to
take this statement at its face value. As the orphan was willing
to labor for a consideration of one dollar gold per month and room,
the experiment could not be an expensive one.

The orphan duly arrived, escorted by Romoldo. He carried her trunk
also, consisting of several garments tied up in a cotton handkerchief.

Her name, as Romoldo pronounced it, was Tikkia (probably Eustaquia),
and I could have wished she had been handsomer and younger. She was
a heavy-browed, pock-marked female, with a mass of cocoanut-oiled
tresses streaming down her back, and one leg, bare from the knee
down, rather obtrusively displaying its skinny shin where her dress
skirt was looped up and tucked in at the waist. She had no petticoat,
and her white chemisette ended two inches below the waist line. As
it was not belted down, it crept out and lent a comical suggestion
of zouave jacket to the camisa, or waist, of _sinamay_ (a kind of
native cloth made of hemp fibres). She understood not one word of
Spanish or English.

When I occupied my new home for the first night, I "ordered"
fried chicken and mashed potatoes for dinner, and then went out in
the kitchen and cooked them. The army quartermaster had loaned me
a range. Romoldo displayed an intelligent interest in the cooking
lesson, but Tikkia seemed bored. When the potatoes were done, I gave
them to Tikkia to mash. Romoldo was in the dining-room, setting the
table. I told her in my best mixed Spanish and Visayan to mash them,
and then to put them on the stove a few minutes in order to dry out any
water in them. She understood just that one word "water"; and when I
returned, after being out of the kitchen a minute, the potatoes were
swimming in a quart of liquid. So I dined on fried chicken.

For the first two or three weeks there were many ludicrous accidents
i