The Maestro suggested that the precious pantaloons which, by the way, had been mysteriously embellished by a red stripe down the right leg and a green stripe down the left leg, could be cleaned in less than a week, and that Saturday and Sunday were days specially set aside in the Catechismo of the Americanos for such little family duties. Isidro understood, and the nightly rehearsals soon reached the stage of: "How menny hhetts hev yu?" "I hev _ten_ hhetts." Then came another arrest of development and another decline, at the end of which Isidro again making his appearance flanked by two German needle-guns, caused a blush of remorse to suffuse the Maestro by explaining with frigid gravity that his mother had given birth to a little pickaninny-brother and that, of course, he had had to help. But significant events in the family did not stop there. After birth, death stepped in for its due. Isidro's relatives began to drop off in rapid sequence--each demise demanding three days of meditation in retirement--till at last the Maestro, who had had the excellent idea of keeping upon paper a record of these unfortunate occurrences, was looking with stupor upon a list showing that Isidro had lost, within three weeks, two aunts, three grandfathers, and five grandmothers--which, considering that an actual count proved the house of bereavement still able to boast of seventeen occupants, was plainly an exaggeration. Following a long sermon from the Maestro in which he sought to explain to Isidro that he must always tell the truth for sundry philosophical reasons--a statement which the First Assistant tactfully smoothed to something within range of credulity by translating it that one must not lie to _Americanos_, because _Americanos_ do not like it--there came a period of serenity. _III--The Triumph_ There came to the Maestro days of peace and joy. Isidro was coming to school; Isidro was learning English. Isidro was steady, Isidro was docile, Isidro was positively so angelic that there was something uncanny about the situation. And with Isidro, other little savages were being pruned into the school-going stage of civilization. Helped by the police, they were pouring in from barrio and hacienda; the attendance was going up by leaps and bounds, till at last a circulative report showed that Balangilang had passed the odious Cabancalan with its less strenuous school-man, and left it in the ruck by a full hundred. The Maestro was triumphant; his chest had gained two inches in expansion. When he met Isidro at recess, playing cibay, he murmured softly: "You little devil; you were Attendance personified, and I've got you now." At which Isidro, pausing in the act of throwing a shell with the top of his head at another shell on the ground, looked up beneath long lashes in a smile absolutely seraphic.