The winter passed with an occasional plunge in the cool river, and the surf-bath every morning before breakfast. In the evening we would ride to Lobuc, racing the ponies back to town in a white cloud of dust. Dinner was always served for any number, for we frequently had visitors,--field officers on hunting leave, commercial drummers from Cebu, the circuit judge, the captain of the _Delapaon_. The doctor had been threatening for some time, now, to give Vivan a necessary whipping, which he did one morning to that Chesterfield's astonishment. Calling the servant "_Usted_," or "Your honor," he applied the strap, and old Vivan was shaking so with laughter that he hardly felt the blows. But after that, he tumbled over himself with eagerness to fill our orders. We had found the coolest places in the town,--the beach at Lobuc, under a wide-spreading tree, and the thatched bridge where the wind swept up and down the river, where the women beat their washing on the rounded stones, and carabaos dreamed in the shade of the bamboo. The cable used to steady the bridge connected with the shore, the doctor explained to the old maid, was the Manila cable over which the messages were sent. The clamor of bells one morning reminded us that the _fiesta_ week was on, and old Vivan came running in excitedly with the intelligence that seven _bancas_ were already anchored at the river's mouth, and there were twenty more in sight. Then he went breathlessly around the town to circulate the news. We rode about in Flora's pony cart, and sometimes went to visit "Foxy Grandpa," wife, and "Arizona Babe." "Old Tom," the convict on parole for murder, waited on the table, serving the pies that Mrs. G. had taught the cook to make, and the canned peaches with evaporated cream. Then, on adjourning to the parlor, with its pillars and white walls, the "Babe" would play "Old Kentucky Home" on the piano till the china shepherdesses danced with the vibrations, and the genial captain, growing reminiscent, would recall the story of the man he had arrested in old Mexico, or even condescend to do a new trick with a handkerchief. There was a curious picture from Japan in a gilt frame that had the place of honor over the piano. It was painted on a plaque of china, robin's-egg blue, inlaid with bits of pearl,--which represented boats or something on the Inland Sea, while figures of men and small boys, enthusiastically waving Japanese flags, all cut out of paper, had been pasted on. There was an arched bridge over the blue water, and a sampan sculled by a boatman in a brown _kimono_. There was a house with paper windows and a thatched roof.