ALILA
Our Little Philippine Cousin
CHAPTER I.
THE NEW BABY.
Alila is such a strong, active boy now, it is hard to imagine him in his babyhood,—he was such a tiny brown tot!
His nose was so flat one would hardly have noticed there was a nose at all, except for the wideness of the nostrils. His big black eyes seemed to be moving around all the time, as much as to say:
"I must find out everything I can, and just as fast as I can, about this queer place in which I find myself."
His hair was straight and coarse and black, even on the day he was born. It was quite warm (in fact, almost all the days are warm in the Philippines), yet the doorway was carefully covered and the windows closed tightly.
Now, why do you suppose Alila found himself shut up in a close room like that when he first entered this big round world of ours, while there was such a soft gentle breeze outside as scarcely to move the tops of the cacao-trees in the garden?
The fact is, Alila's father, who is not afraid of the wild buffalo nor the boa-constrictor, nor even the huge cayman, is constantly dreading the evil that bad spirits may bring to him. And now he had a darling boy of his very own! According to the beliefs of his people, no evil spirit must be allowed to enter a home when a child is born, or the little one might be troubled by the spirit for the rest of his life.
So the loving parent walked back and forth over the roof waving a bolo in his hand, as much as to say: