accustomed to. Most of them might have been positively attractive, but
for their ingeniously ugly mode of clipping the hair and blackening the
teeth.

The youngest were mere children, hardly more than fourteen years old.
All were arrayed in rich materials, though the fashion did not differ
from that of their slaves, numbers of whom were prostrate in the rooms
and passages. My apartments were ablaze with their crimson, blue,
orange, and purple, their ornaments of gold, their rings and brilliants,
and their jewelled boxes. Two or three of the younger girls satisfied my
Western ideas of beauty, with their clear, mellow, olive complexions,
and their almond-shaped eyes, so dark yet glowing. Those among them who
were really old were simply hideous and repulsive. One wretched crone
shuffled through the noisy throng with an air of authority, and pointing
to Boy lying in my lap, cried, "_Moolay, moolay!_" "Beautiful,
beautiful!" The familiar Malay word fell pleasantly on my ear, and I was
delighted to find some one through whom I might possibly control the
disorderly bevy around me. I addressed her in Malay. Instantly my
visitors were silent, and waiting in attitudes of eager attention.

She told me she was one of the many custodians of the harem. She was a
native of Quedah; and "some sixty years ago," she and her sister,
together with other young Malay girls, were captured while working in
the fields by a party of Siamese adventurers. They were brought to Siam
and sold as slaves. At first she mourned miserably for her home and
parents. But while she was yet young and attractive she became a
favorite of the late Somdetch Ong Yai, father of her present lord, and
bore him two sons, just as "moolay, moolay" as my own darling. But they
were dead. (Here, with the end of her soiled silk scarf she furtively
wiped a tear from her face, no longer ugly.) And her gracious lord was