"'Sus-Maria-Joseph!" exclaimed the Maestra; "she said that? But it is barbarous! The children, they will unlearn all that I learned them! It is--what you call?--it is impossible!" "Yes," went on the Maestro, seeing that he was on the right track, and using his imagination a bit; "and she told them, 'I has two hats.'" "'I has? I has?' she said 'I has'? Que barbaridad! Señor Pablo, I will----" And, dropping her bowl of rice, she started running toward the school, while behind her back the Maestro executed a little jig. His undignified joy, however, lasted but a few seconds. The Maestra came to an abrupt stop, looked down at her garments, and came back slowly. "I cannot go to school in these clothes," she said, sorrowfully. "No," admitted the Maestro; "but can you not put on your others?" The Maestra looked embarrassed. "Señor Maestro," she confided, "you know my mother; she is very aged, you know, and she does not know American like me, and she dislikes very much American customs----" She hesitated. "Well?" said the Maestro, not understanding. "She hates very much American customs, and so she hates the leapa-year custom; and this morning, this morning she told me not to come back to her house, and all my clothes are in the house." There was a long silence. "Gosh all hemlock," said the Maestro, at length, and then there was another silence. The Maestra broke it. "Señor Maestro," she said, softly, "do you think, maybe, perhaps, you could go and ask my mother for the clothes?" "Good golly!" remarked the Maestro. "Good golly!" he repeated, wiping his brow with his handkerchief. But he started off. He returned a half hour later, wilted and perspiring. The old Señora de la Rama had some tenacious Chinese blood in her veins, and the struggle had been an unpleasant one. But the Maestro had won. Across his right arm, held gingerly away from him, there shimmered jusis and piñas. He passed the objects to the Maestra with averted eyes and left her in her glade. Some ten minutes later, as the Maestro was leading his boys in their daily calisthenics, a sudden weird note came floating mournfully through the water-logged atmosphere. The Maestro stood still, with attentive ear, and the cry cut itself into unmistakable syllables: "Chee-rrries rrri-pa; chee-rrries rrri-pa!" It came from the girls' schoolhouse. "One-two; one-two!" said the Maestro, and the next exercise was so vigorous that before it was finished the urchins were breathless and drooping. IV Crushed into a limp, discouraged mass in the depths of his cane chair, the Maestro grasped his head with both hands and thought. Thought with the Maestro was the sign of deep distress. Usually, he just acted.