gauzy camisa and panuelo--a most comical little caricature of
womanhood. She was speechless with fright, but came on so recklessly
that I began to suspect the cause of her determination. It was,
in truth, behind her as my groom of the front yard soon let me
know. Again the elfin face and the wiry pompadour leaned round the
door-jamb--"One more pupil, letty,--dthe girl's modther."

But she was not a pupil, of course, and she had only come in response
to the heart promptings of motherhood, white, black, or brown, to talk
about her offspring to the strange woman who was to usurp a mother's
place with her so many hours of each day. She was quite as voluble
as American mothers are, and her daughter was quite embarrassed by
her volubility. The child sat stealing frightened glances at me and
resentful ones at her mother.

Half an hour later, three more girls came in, and they continued
to drop in during the rest of the morning till I had forty-five
enrolled. Some of them were accompanied by their dogs, which curled
up under the benches without disturbance. Several nursemaids also
happened along to give their charges a peep at the American school,
and a crowd of citizens peered in at doors and windows and made
audible remarks about the new institution.

Within a few days the enrolment ran up to one hundred and
forty-nine. As this was too large a body to be handled by me alone,
the teacher of Spanish days was brought back to the school, pending the
arrival of more teachers from the States. She was a plump, middle-aged
body who had a little--a very little--English, but whose ideas of
discipline, recitation, and study were too well fixed to permit of
accommodation to our methods. She was unfailingly polite and kind,
though I could see that she was often harassed by the innovations to
which she could not accustom herself.

The school-house was one immense room, and one of the first acts of
the Division Superintendent was to set in motion the forces which
should separate it into three. This took time. First the Presidente
had to approve, and the town council to act on his suggestion. The
Municipal Treasurer, a native official, had to certify the cost to
the Provincial Treasurer, an American civil appointee, and if the
last-named official approved, the council could make the appropriation
and order the work done.

Pending these changes, the Filipino teacher took one end of the room
and I the other. We were sufficiently far apar