The boarding-house, kept by a crusty but good-hearted Englishman, stood opposite the row of porches roofed with heavy tiles, that made _Calle Colon_ a colonnade. Across the street was a window in the wall, where the brown-eyed Lucretia used to sell ginger-ale and sarsaparilla to the soldiers. With her waving pompadour, her olive cheeks, and sultry eyes, Lucretia was the belle of all the town. There wasn't a soldier in the whole command who wouldn't have laid down his life for her. And in this land where nothing seemed to be worth while, Lucretia, with her pretty manners and her gentle ways, had a good influence upon the tawny musketeers who dropped in to play a game of dominos or drink a glass of soda with her; and she treated all of them alike. A monkey chattered on the balcony, sliding up and down the bamboo-pole, or reaching for pieces of bananas which the boarders passed him from the dinner-table. "Have you chowed yet?" asked a grating voice, which, on a negative reply, ordered a place to be made ready for me at the table. Barefooted _muchachos_ placed the thumb-marked dishes on the dirty table-cloth. I might add that a napkin had been spread to cover the spot where the tomato catsup had been spilled, and that the chicken-soup, in which a slice of bread was soaked, slopped over the untidy thumb that carried it. But I omitted this course, as the red ants floating on the surface of the broth rendered the dish a questionable delicacy. The boarders had adjourned to the parlor, and were busy reading "Diamond Dick," "Nick Carter," and the other five and ten cent favorites. A heavy rain had set in, as I drew my chair up to the light and tried to lose myself in the adventures of the boy detective. But the mosquitoes of Cebu! The rainy season had produced them by the wholesale, and full-blooded ones at that. These were the strange bed-fellows that made misery that night, as they discovered openings in the mosquito-bar that, I believe, they actually made themselves! The parlor (where the bed was situated) was a very interesting room. There was a rickety walnut cabinet containing an assortment of cobwebby Venus's fingers, which remind you of the mantel that you fit over the gas jet; seashells that had been washed up, appropriately branded "Souvenir of Cebu;" tortoise-shell curios from Nagasaki, and an album of pictures from Japan. The floor was polished every morning by the house-boys, and the furniture arranged in the most formal manner, _vis-á-vis_.