I was no slouch nor shirk, either, but I knew more about eating than anything else, and I naturally gravitated to the cook’s tent and put him on to a lot of things the boys liked. I got to be rather popular with the company in this way, and when the Commissary Sergeant was appointed in Manila, I managed to get the place, though I was only a rookie. Perhaps the Captain’s wife helped me out some. She, being an officer’s lady, wasn’t supposed to know I was on earth, but somehow she noticed me and fixed it up easy. Commissary work was a snap—little drill, no guard mount, leave of absence occasionally, and the run of the town in a little pony cart. You see each company had its quota of rations. We could draw them, or leave them and get credit. There was maple syrup and candy, canned fruit, and chocolate, and all sorts of good stuff in the storehouse that we could get at wholesale rates. By cutting down on fresh meat and pinching on bacon, I managed the company’s accounts so that we could have hot griddle-cakes and maple syrup every day. That’s the way I held my job. If I ever become famous it will be for having introduced Pie in the Philippines. Every morning I drove around Manila, visiting the markets with a man to help me, exchanging sacks of flour for fresh baker’s bread and cakes, getting chickens, and so on, besides making friends right and left. About two nights every week I was dancing or flirting with the half-breed women; Mestizas they called them. That’s how I got into trouble. Her name was Senorita Maria del Pilar Assompcion Aguilar, and nothing that ever I saw could touch her for looks. She was the kind of woman that makes you forget everything else that ever happened before. She and her brother owned about the whole of a province in the middle of the island of Luzon. When she came into the room it was all over with me. There was more of the Spanish than the Filipino in her, enough to give her the style and air of a lady, but she got her beauty from the tropics. Her hair was like one of those hot black nights they have down there—silky and soft, drifting around her face—but it was her eyes that made you lose sleep. They were blue-black, not melting, but wide-awake and piercing. They were just a bit crossed, hardly a hairbreadth out, but that little cast seemed to make her even prettier than if they were straight. A Kansas sergeant told me that the family was in from their country place, and that the Secret Service people were watching her. She and her brother were suspected of knowing a good deal about Aguinaldo’s plans.