noon
The general went off to the fleet and the Brents back to shore without the girls . But in the course of the afternoon four more officers came to tender their services to `` Billy Ray 's daughter , '' and none , not even a hospital steward , came to do aught for the Red Cross , and by sundown Maidie Ray had every assurance that the most popular girl at that moment in Manila army circles was the least popular aboard the Sacramento , and Kate Porter cried herself to sleep after an out-and-out squabble with two of the Band , and the emphatic assertion that if she were Marion Ray she would cut them all dead and go live with her friends ashore . But when the morrow came was it to be wondered at that Miss Ray had developed a high fever ? Was it not characteristic that before noon , from the official head down , from Dr. Wells to Dottie Fellows , the most diminutive of the party , there lived not a woman of their number who was not eager in tender of services and in desire to be at the sufferer 's bedside ? Was it not manlike that Stuyvesant , who had shunned the sisterhood for days , now sought the very women he had scorned , and begged for tidings of the girl he loved ? October had come and the rainy season was going , but still the heat of the mid-day sun drove everybody within doors except the irrepressible Yankee soldiery , released `` on pass '' from routine duty at inner barracks or outer picket line , and wandering about this strange , old-world metropolis of the Philippines , reckless of time or temperature in their determination to see everything there was to be seen about the whilom stronghold of `` the Dons '' in Asiatic waters . Along the narrow sidewalks of the Escolta , already bordered by American signs -- and saloons , -- and rendered even more than usually precarious by American drinks , the blue-shirted boys wandered , open-eyed , marvelling much to find ` twixt twelve and two the shutters up in all the shops not conducted , as were the bars , on the American plan , while from some , still more Oriental , the sun and the shopper both were excluded four full hours , beginning at eleven .