RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
every house he looked at added some new, desirable aspect to the Arellano house, until, finally, it became in his eyes a sort of palace which needed only a touch here and there to make it quite perfect.
It backed directly on the Bay, and among the first things he did was to have a sea-wall built which he thought added safety to the top-heavy structure, but which, during the typhoon season, really cost him more than it was worth. Every time a big wind came and roughed up the Bay a little, a part of his wall went out. His first complaint to me was that he had been “holding that wall down” all summer, and that part of it was always sure to try to get away every time he found himself particularly occupied with harassing governmental difficulties.
He had had sod laid down between the house and the sea-wall, and had watched it for awhile with a faith which should have been rewarded, but the salt spray came dashing over it and he had to have it carefully taken up and moved around to the sheltered side of the house. Good sod was scarce in Manila in those days.
My husband was certainly glad to see me, and I don’t doubt that General Wright was just as glad to see his wife. The two of them had been “keeping house” together for three months under conditions wholly new to them, and I gathered that they found a bachelor existence rather complicated and, in certain details, annoying. In some ways, after the manner of men, they had permitted the house to run itself and I did not find it easy to break up the system which had been inaugurated.
The house was not perfect, by any means, but it was big and roomy and had what a woman knows as “great possibilities”; possibilities which I found had to be slowly developed with the assistance of a somewhat taciturn and not altogether willing ménage.
Coming in from the grand marble steps one passed up a
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