In Manila the marketing is usually done by the cook, but in our household this duty was delegated to the number one boy. One day the cook and the number two boy came to Mr. Taft with the announcement that they could not remain in the house with number one boy; that number one boy was a thief; that he smoked opium all the time he was supposed to be marketing; and that he was a bad Chinaman generally. Mr. Taft had always given number one boy the money with which to pay the other boys’ salaries and the cash market charges, so he said to the cook:

“Has number one always paid your wages?”

“Yes,” said the cook, with an eloquent shrug of his shoulders, “just my wages and nothing more.”

This meant, of course, that number one boy was committing the unforgivable sin of not dividing the “squeeze.”