Well the catastrophe arrived and we were prisoners for nearly a
week. It was not quite cholera but close enough to it to scare us all
to death. Both Eve and the apple were young and green, and the
combination worked disaster. When the doctor arrived, he shipped Eve
off to the inspection hospital, while we were locked up, guarded by
five small policemen, and hardly allowed to open our mouths for fear
we would swallow a germ. We were fumigated and par-boiled until we
felt like steam puddings. Nobody was allowed to go in or out, our
vegetables were handed to us in a basket on a bamboo pole over the
wall. We tied notes to bricks and flung them to our neighbors on the
outside. Thank Heaven, the servants were locked in too. Every day a
little man with lots of brass buttons and a big voice came and asked
anxiously after our honorable insides.

I used every inducement to get them to let me go out for exercise. I
fixed a tray with my prettiest cups and sent a pot of steaming coffee
and a plate of cake out to the lodge house. Word came back, "We are
not permitted to drink or taste food in an infected house." Then I
tried them on button-hole bouquets, and when that failed, I got
desperate, and announced that I was subject to fits, unless I got
regular outside exercise every day. That fetched them and they gave
the foreign teachers permission to walk in the country for half an
hour provided we did not speak to any one.

Eve was up and having a good time before the school gates were opened.
While a prisoner, I did all sorts of odd jobs, patched, mended,
darned, wrote letters, and chopped down two trees. The latter was a
little out of my line, but the trees were eaten up with caterpillars,
and as I could not get anybody to cut them down, I sallied forth and
did it myself. My chef stood by and admired the job, but he would not