Unofficial letters of an official's wife [by] Edith Moses.

UNOFFICIAL LETTERS OF

the butcher's knife when his name turns up. Thus
we never know what we shall have for dinner.
Sometimes it is a fine leg of mutton or a filet of
beef, but the next day it may be soup meat, or a
chunk off the neck, and this usually happens when
we have company. I found the cook in despair the
other day, for a dinner party was on the programme
and he had received a yard or two of thin beef six
inches wide, which looked like a long, narrow piece
of red and white calico. If it storms we get no
meat for three or four days. Far be it from me
to complain, for we pay only six cents a pound and
the meat is good, and in town it costs from fifty
to seventy-five cents a pound. Besides, as everyone
is served in the same way, there is a certain amount
of amusement in the situation. Chickens, eggs, vegetables, fruit, and fish we buy in the native markets.
Lai Ting, our head boy, does this, and brings me
each night a neatly written bill he calls his " expense." He can write fair English, but his spelling
is pure chino. "Spinige " and " paty " puzzled me
for some time. He always charges sixteen cents
for a "carige" in which he drives back with his
supplies. He also includes in his daily purchases
four cents' worth of " vegtibels" and twenty cents
of "pig" for the kitchen "chow." The boys do
not eat our food, but each has an allowance of one
pound of rice a day and the "pig and vegtibels."
The boys make a percentage on all they buy, but
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