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When Busuk grew older, she was carried every day down the ladder of the house and put on the warm white sand with the other children. They were all naked, save for a little chintz bib that was tied to their necks; so it made no difference how many mudpies they made on the beach nor how wet they got in the tepid waters of the ocean.

Her father, the old punghulo, or chief, of the little kampong, or village, of Passir Panjang, whispered the soft Allah Akbar, the prayer to Allah, in her small brown ear. The subjects of the punghulo brought presents of sarongs run with gold thread, and not larger than a handkerchief, for Busuk to wear about her waist.

The loom on which Busuk's mother wove the sarongs for the punghulo and for her sons stood by the side of the window, and Busuk, from the sling in which she sat on her mother's side, could see the fishing praus glide by, and also the big lumber tonkangs, and at rare intervals one of his Highness's launches.

He raised the back of his open palm to his forehead with a quiet dignity when I left, after the day's sport, and said, "Tabek! Tuan Consul. Do not forget Mamat's humble bungalow." And Busuk came down the ladder with little Mamat astride her bare shoulders, with a pleasant "Tabek! Tuan! At the foot of Mount Ophir

First, Busuk took out a syrah leaf smeared with lime and placed in it some broken fragments of the betel-nut, and chewed it until a bright red liquid oozed from the corners of her mouth. The others did the same.

It took a dozen men to tie a rope to the serpent's tail, and pull it out. Busuk went everywhere astride the punghulo's broad shoulders as he collected the taxes and settled the disputes in the little village.

They also brought gifts of rice in baskets of cunningly woven cocoanut fibre; of bananas, a hundred on a bunch; of durians, that filled the bungalow with so strong an odor that Busuk drew up her wrinkled, tiny face into a quaint frown; and of cocoanuts in their great green, oval shucks.

Then the women brought garlands of flowers red allamandas, yellow convolvulus, and pink hibiscus and hung them about Busuk and Mamat, while the musicians outside beat their crocodile-hide drums in frantic haste. The great feast began out in the sandy plaza before the houses. There was cock-fighting and kicking the ragga ball, wrestling and boxing, and some gambling among the elders.

Toward night Busuk was put in a rattan chair and carried by the young men, while Mamat and the girls walked by her side, a mile away, where her husband's big cadjang-covered prau lay moored. It was to take them to his bungalow at Bander Bahru.

So, long before the time that our American girls are out of school, and about the time they are putting on long dresses, Busuk was a woman. Her shoulders were bent, her face wrinkled, her teeth decayed and falling out from the use of the syrah leaf.