I went on tour with Come Quick and True Love. Come Quick could not sing this particular song. She was a nurse from Bartholomew's Department who had got her name by virtue of an easy birth. In sterner quarters she was regarded as a shameless hussy; I thought her delightful. She was attractive too, in a tomboyish way. But she had a gap in her front teeth, and this was the reason that she couldn't sing Saw Ter Kwa – it always came out as Thaw Ter Kwa, or so said True Love who (if he could stop laughing for long enough) would imitate Come Quick singing and reduce her to foot-stamping rage. She was very easily teased.

But Come Quick did nothing to dispel her own reputation. Indeed, she was a prize flirt, and was teased for that too. This particular tour took us walking up a side stream to a village where there was a young teacher called Milly. True Love declared that I was in love with Milly and that Come Quick was crazy with jealousy. I grinned at the latter, hissing softly through my front teeth–and she came after me with a parang, chasing me round the compound and succeeding in cutting my finger, after which she went ofFpenitently to gather certain salving leaves, rubbed them to a pulp with her spittle, and dressed the wound.