questions of good or bad taste, matters of opinion dependent upon the point of view of the individual. Among white men, however, Saleh discovered, to his astonishment, that they were hard-and-fast categories into which actions were divided past all possibility of debate, and the simple answer, "It would not be right," sufficed in most cases to deter his new comrades from participating in the most tempting pleasures. Once again, for the life of him, he could not understand it. When he had suggested to George that indulgenee in a certain vice-a vice for which in his father's court men and women mainly lived-would relieve the tedium of their studies, the English boy had looked upon him with horror, had threatened to "knock his head off" if he talked like that again, and had shown him with true British bluntness how unfathomable was his disgust.

Honour, duty, morality-straitening things which seemed to clog the feet of liberty, as Saleh had always understood it-had come upon him suddenly, new ideas difficult to assimilate, and in their own fashion more numbing to the brain, more paralysing, more appalling than those other revelations, the vastness of the universe and the multitude of humanity, had been. Then, too, the life in which he found himself was strenuous, earnest, instinct with a restless energy that jarred upon his indolent nature. It seemed to him as though he had been transported to some lofty mountain-top, and were called upon, without preparation, to breathe the rarefied atmosphere of the upper airs. He stood there morally panting, gasping,— moving with acute discomfort on a plane too high for him. He longed for the denser atmosphere of his fatherland, and he despaired of ever becoming habitu

ated to that which seemingly was natural, congenial, to those with whom he now associated. As to ever winning to a real understanding of the extraordinary points of view of these people, that obviously was a patent impossibility.

Beyond this there were half a hundred minor matters which appealed to Saleh as incongruous. His manhood was offended, revolted, by the position occupied among white folk by the women.

Even after weeks of use, his meals were a humiliation to him because Mrs Le Mesurier and her daughters sat at table. Even his own mother would not have dreamed of taking such a liberty with her son. The service rendered by the maid-servants was natural enough, but it hurt his pride and his self-respect to find that he was expected to give way to the daughters of the house in everything, that he was chidden if he neglected to offer to carry a cloak for a lady, if he did not run willingly on trifling errands for Mrs Le Mesurier, if he was not active in forestalling the wants of her and of her daughters. From the moment of their first meeting Mrs Le Mesurier, by her grace and kindness, had won his heart; but still, to his thinking, she was but a woman,—a being of inferior clay to the material from which he was fashioned,-and he was irked by a system that made of her a central pivot round which the household revolved. This unquestionably was ta' pâtut—not fitting-yet seemingly it offended the sense of propriety of no one save himself. The absence of all forms, too, struck him as barbarous. All his life he had been hedged about by ritual. Those who had spoken to him had described themselves as pâtek-thy slave; for was he not the son of a king?-but here all ceremony was dropped, and,

shorn of his titles, he found himself answering to the name of "Sally," and being scoffed at and mocked because "Sally" was in England a woman's name. George, the young barbarian, even called him "Aunt Sally" at times, and once at a fair had gravely introduced him to a dilapidated cockshy, which he declared must be one of his near relatives,—a hideous idol of the white men at which certain savage creatures were engaged in throwing missiles with grotesque antics and an outrageous uproar. It was when he next was addressed as "Aunt Sally" that he had first tried to fight George, and finding that the attempt was a failure, for what could a man do who had no knife ready to his hand ?-had retired to the arbour in tears. "Chaff," as George would have called it, was again something foreign to Saleh's experience. To him it was simply a rudeness, a brutality-not fitting.

As much of all this as his mental and linguistic limitations could make articulate he now sobbed out to Mabel, omitting only all reference to his disapproval of the undue exaltation of her sex, for Malays are not devoid of a certain instinctive tact. His trouble was of a nature too complex to be readily comprehended by his little listener; but, fortunately for mankind, a woman's sympathy is not always dependent upon her understanding, and Mabel, knowing he was very unhappy, without inquiring too closely into the causes, patted his shoulder and whispered words of consolation into his ear.

"Don't cry, Saleh dear," she said. "We all like you very much, and you are going to live with us for a long time and be very happy too when you get used to us. You mustn't mind George. He is a boy, you know, and boys are like that. He is always trying

to get a rise out of all of us. He likes you very much too, really. He was only saying the other day how beautifully you swim, and how clever you are in the gym. He says you can do things on the bar at the first try which it takes English boys years and years to learn. He only calls you 'Aunt Sally' for fun, just as he calls me 'Furze-bush' when I have had my hair in curl-papers."

Saleh shuddered at the recollection. His taste, moulded by the lank, sleek, oil-dressed heads of his own womankind, was grievously offended by the sight of curls.

"And you called me a blackamoor," he said sulkily. "I'm sorry, Sally."

"You white people are so . . . so proud. You think many things of yourself, but we Malays have beated you. The English soldiers ran like stags when we ambushed them during the war in Pělěsu."

"They didn't!" cried the little girl indignantly.

"Yes, they did. They ran and ran, and our people ran after them and shot them and shouted. I have often heard people talk of it."

"English soldiers are very brave," said Mabel, with proud conviction.

"They are not as brave as the Malays, and they ran away," said Saleh doggedly.

"I don't believe it," cried Mabel.

won, didn't we?"

Saleh was silent.

"Besides, we

"You called me a blackamoor," he said presently, returning with resentment to his earlier accusation.

"I know I did, and I was a beast," said Mabel generously. "And, Sally, I'm sorry-ever so sorryand I'll never do it again; but you mustn't say that

English soldiers ran away, because they never do, you know."

"But they did," objected Saleh.

"O Sally, Sally, you'll make me quarrel with you after all!" cried Mabel piteously. "And I do want to be friends."

"I can not be frien's with people who calls me blackamoor," said Saleh, looking at her and softening ever so little.

"But I won't. And I do like you, Sally, and when you are unhappy don't go away and cry by yourself. Come and tell me all about it, and I'll comfort you. I can help you in a lot of ways, if you'll let me. I know heaps and heaps of things. And I won't tell that you said such wicked words, only promise that you won't go on hating us, and that you won't mind George, and that you will come to me when you have the blues."

She spoke very earnestly, with her kind little hand still resting on the boy's coat-sleeve, and with her bright eyes shining. She was to Saleh like a being from another world, possessed of nothing in common with the women-folk of his own race. Her kindness spoke to him in his desolation, took him by the hand to lead his faltering steps through the darkness in which he was engulfed; and in that moment, I think, he began to understand why in our land the accident of sex causes women to be held in such deep reverence.

During the twelvemonth that followed-the painful first year in which Saleh was finding his level, and fitting in as best he might with the circumstances of his alien surroundings-Mabel's friendship and encouragement, Mabel's advice, admonitions, guidance, made the rough path smooth, and laid many a high hill low