A Town like Alice

to talk business with a woman, on behalf of women?" She now knew something of the right approach to a Mohammedan.
    He bowed to her, and led her to his house. There was a small rickety veranda; they went up to this and sat down upon the floor facing each other. He was a level-eyed old man with close-cropped hair and a small, clipped moustache, naked to the waist and wearing a sarong; his face was firm, but not unkind. He called sharply to his wife within the house to bring out coffee.
    Jean waited till the coffee appeared, making small talk for politeness; she knew the form after six months in the villages. It came in two thick glasses, without milk and sweet with sugar. She bowed to him, and lifted her glass and sipped, and set it down again. "We are in a difficulty," she said frankly. "Our guard is dead, and what now will become of us is in our own hands-and in yours. You know our story. We were taken prisoner at Panong, and since then we have walked many hundreds of miles to this place. No Japanese commander will receive us and put us in a camp and feed us and attend to us in illness, because each commander thinks that these things are the duty of the other; so they march us under guard from town to town. This has been going on now for more than six months, and in that time half of our party have died upon the road."
    He inclined his head.
    "Now that our gunso is dead," she said, "what shall we do? If we go on until we find a Japanese officer and report to him, he will not want us; nobody in all this country wants us. They will not kill us quickly, as they might if we were men. They will get us out of the way by marching us on to some other place, perhaps into a country of swamps such as we have come through. So we shall grow ill again, and one by one we shall all die. That is what lies ahead of us, if we report now to the Japanese."
    He replied, "It is written that the angels said, 'Every soul shall taste of death, and we will prove you with evil and with good for a trial of you, and unto us shall ye return.'"
    She thought quickly; the words of the headman at Dilit came into her mind. She said, "It is also written, 'If you be kind towards women and fear to wrong them, God is well acquainted what ye do.'"
    He eyed her steadily. "Where is that written?"
    She said, "In the Fourth Surah."
    "Are you of the Faith?" he asked incredulously.
    She shook her head. "I do not want to deceive you. I am a Christian; we are all Christians. The headman of a village on our road was kind to us, and when I thanked him he said that to me. I do not know the Koran."
    "You are a very clever woman," he said. "Tell me what you want."
    I want our party to stay here, in this village," she said, "and go to work in the paddy fields, as your women do." He stared at her, astonished. "This will be dangerous for you," she said. We know that very well. If Japanese officers find us in this place before you have reported to them that we are here, they will be very angry. And so, I want you to do this. I want you to let us go to work at once with one or two of your women to show us what to do. We will work all day for our food alone and a place to sleep. When we have worked so for two weeks, I will go myself and find an officer and report to him, and tell him what we are doing. And you shall come with me, as headman of this village, and you shall tell the officer that more rice will be grown for the Japanese if we are allowed to continue working in the rice fields. These are the things I want."
    "I have never heard of white mems working in the paddy fields," he said.
    She asked, "Have you ever heard of white mems marching and dying as we have marched and died?"
    He was silent.
    "We are in your hands," she said. "If you say, go upon your way and walk on to some other place, then we must go, and going we must die. That will then be a matter between you and God. If you allow us to stay and cultivate your fields and live with you in peace and safety, you will get great honour when the English Tuans return to this country after their victory. Because they will win this war in the end; these Short Ones are in power now, but they cannot win against the Americans and all the free peoples of the world. One day the English Tuans will come back."
    He said, "I shall be glad to see that day."
    They sat in silence for a time, sipping the glasses of coffee. Presently the headman said, "This is a matter not to be decided lightly, for it concerns the whole village. I