You remember my telling you about the _fracas_ next door? That family all moved away, eventually, but not to Manila, only to the next street parallel to this. The next-door basement is now occupied by a dressmaker, a jolly fat old Tagalo woman with a deep voice like a man, and her hair scraped up into a knob with a comb (an ordinary white bone one for _combing_) stuck across it. Besides the comb, she wears nothing but a chemise, petticoat, and slippers. The work-girls are all natives, and they sit about the big front room on mats on the floor, sewing and cutting out and talking all day long. They are there at five in the morning, and often work till after dark. Two have sewing machines on tables, and they look so queer in their tight native _sarong_ and muslin _camisa_, sitting on a Viennese cane chair at a treadle-machine.
The husband of the Tagalo is a fat, greasy Spaniard, with side-whiskers, and an eternal cigar, who lounges all day in a cane chair in vest and trousers, reading the _Heraldo_, and balancing his slippers on the tips of his bare toes. They appear to hit it off very well, he and his old native wife, for he is quite content to blowze and loaf all day, and roll off to his club now and then, while she is a typical, thrifty, hard-working Tagalo,[10] always amongst her work-girls, and generally sewing herself. She sits in a chair, though, and every now and then picks up an old cigar-box that is for ever within her reach, and rolls herself a cigarette, scooping up very carefully every crumb of tobacco that falls into her capacious lap.
This Filipina keeps the house much cleaner than the _Mestizas_ did, and has more regard for privacy, in the shape of curtains of bright cretonne nailed across the side windows. The old lady has a very pet dog, which is exactly like herself—a huge, fat, sleek, brown creature, perfectly good-natured, with a deep, full voice. They have a spaniel too, and other dogs that run in and out, and I can’t make out how many belong to the house, or how many are only friends; but I got to be quite certain of one, which nearly always lies on the window-ledge, and to know it by sight. After a time, however, it gradually dawned on me that this particular spaniel never moved—and then I discovered that he was _stuffed_! Till I knew that, he was, to me, a quiet, contemplative dog; but since I found he was stuffed, he has become a horrible, uncanny demon.