Following this, and an unsuccessful plea to the town tailor, who was on a three weeks' vacation on account of the death of a fourth cousin, the Maestro shut himself up a whole day with Isidro in his little nipa house; and behind the closely-shut shutters engaged in some mysterious toil. When they emerged again the next morning, Isidro wended his way to the school at the end of the Maestro's arm, trousered! The trousers, it must be said, had a certain cachet of distinction. They were made of calico-print, with a design of little black skulls sprinkled over a yellow background. Some parts hung flat and limp as if upon a scarecrow; others pulsed like a fire-hose in action with the pressure of flesh compressed beneath, while at other points they bulged pneumatically in little footballs. The right leg dropped to the ankle; the left stopped, discouraged, a few inches below the knee. The seams looked like the putty mountain-chains of the geography class. As the Maestro strode along he threw rapid glances at his handiwork, and it was plain that the emotions that moved him were somewhat mixed in character. His face showed traces of a puzzled diffidence, as that of a man who has come in a sack-coat to a full-dress affair; but after all it was satisfaction that predominated, for after this heroic effort he had decided that Victory had at last perched upon his banners. And it really looked so for a time. Isidro stayed at school at least during that first day of his trousered life. For when the Maestro, later in the forenoon, paid a visit to the Annex, he found the Assistant in charge standing disconcerted before the urchin who, with eyes indignant and hair perpendicular upon the top of his head, was evidently holding to his side of the argument with his customary energy. Isidro was trouserless. Sitting rigid upon his bench, holding on with both hands as if in fear of being removed, he dangled naked legs to the sight of who might look. "Que barbaridad!" murmured the Assistant, in limp dejection. But Isidro threw at him a look of black hatred. This became a tense, silent plea for justice as it moved up for a moment to the Maestro's face, and then it settled back upon its first object in frigid accusation. "Where are your trousers, Isidro?" asked the Maestro. Isidro relaxed his convulsive grasp of the bench with one hand, canted himself slightly to one side, just long enough to give an instantaneous view of the trousers, neatly folded and spread between what he was sitting with and what he was sitting on, then swung back with the suddenness of a kodak shutter, seized his seat with new determination, and looked eloquent justification at the Maestro. "Why will you not wear them?" asked the latter. "He says he will not get them dirty," said the Assistant, interpreting the answer. "Tell him when they are dirty he can go down to the river and wash them," said the Maestro.