“Your dress! There has been a lamp burnt there!” And pointed to the sparks.
But the woman merely glared over her shoulder, as if he had offered her some insult. I could gladly have stuck my fork into her impudent, bold, brown face, and can’t, as yet, see why in the Eternal Fitness of Things she did not catch fire and flare up.
After supper we watched a waltz and a two-step, and then went away about twelve.
On our way out I passed one of the alcove openings into the inner room, where I saw a sad, white Bouguereau Madonna face looking up at a man bending down, and recognised one of the heroines of the late funcion (a delightful Spanish slang word) next door. So I perceived that the Marble Misery was a chronic pose, and nothing at all to do with her relations stabbing each other. Only, I must say she looked more “in the picture,” running down the street with her hair streaming, than in a bright ball-room.
We had gone to the baile in a hired quilez, as we did not want to take our own frisky pony out on such a night of Chinese crackers underfoot and rockets overhead, and we had told the quilez man to come back for us. To our astonishment, he did so. Not that it was much of a treasure in the way of a carriage, for it was so badly balanced that our weight at the back would have lifted the pony clean off the ground if the driver had not kept the balance by squatting on the shafts over the pony’s tail. The little animal tore along, and it was a wonder and a mystery to see how the driver stuck on at all. It was probably chiefly done with his toes, for Filipino toes stand apart, supple like fingers, and are used in the most marvellous and uncanny ways. In the streets the Filipinos wear, or ought to wear, only slippers of gaudy velvet, called chinelas, but many of them now affect stockings and pointed shoes, which I think must be one of the most doubtful blessings of civilisation. In the procession I noticed many of the little school girls and boys with stockings on and awful shoes, and one or two of the little girls even wore hats, but, if I described them to you, you would not believe me!
Well, have you ever had such a long letter in your life? And yet there is any amount more to tell you if I only had the energy to write it.
LETTER XXXVI.
COCK-FIGHTING—PULAJANES
Iloilo, July 14, 1905.