great pet with the Menghyi; he took her on his knee and played with her
long black hair, as he told her about the visitors. The little lady was in
her twelfth year, and was the daughter of a colleague and a relative of
the Menghyi. She had an olive oval face, with lovely dark eyes, like the
eyes of a deer. She wore a tiara of feathery white blossoms. In her ears
were rosettes of chased red gold. Round her throat was a necklace of a
double row of large pearls. Her fingers--I regret to say her nails were
not very clean--were loaded with rings set with great diamonds of
exceptional sparkle and water; one stone in particular must have been
worth many thousands of pounds. She wore a jacket of white silk, and round
her loins was girt a gay silken robe that trailed about her bare feet as
she walked. She shook hands with us with a pretty shyness and immediately
helped herself to a cheroot, affably accepting a light from mine. The
Menghyi told us she was a great scholar--could read and write with
facility, and had accomplishments to boot.

By this time the provincial band had taken its place under one of the
windows of the kiosk, and it presently struck up. Its music was not
pretty. There were in the strange weird strain suggestions of gongs,
bagpipes, penny whistles, and the humble tom-tom of Bengal. The gentleman
who performed on an instrument which seemed a hybrid between a flute and a
French horn, occasionally arrested his instrumental music to favour us
with vocal strains, but he failed to compete successfully with the
cymbals. I do not think the Menghyi was enraptured by the music of the
strollers from Pegu, for he presently asked us whether we were ready to go
to the _pooey_. He again led the way through a garden, passing in one
corner of it a temporary house of which a company of Burmese nuns,
short-haired, pallid-faced, unhappy-looking women, were in possession; and
passing through a gate in the wicker-work fence ushered us into the
"state-box" of the improvised theatre. There is very little labour