his big toe drawing vague
figures in the earth, then appealing to the First Assistant who was
present by this time, he added in the tone of virtue which _will_ be
modest:

"Maestro Pablo does not like it when I do not come to school on account
of a funeral, so I brought him (pointing to the little box) with me."

"Well, I'll be----" was the only comment the Maestro found adequate at
the moment.

"It is my little pickaninny-brother," went on Isidro, becoming alive to
the fact that he was a center of interest, "and he died last night of
the great sickness."

"The great what?" ejaculated the Maestro who had caught a few words.

"The great sickness," explained the Assistant. "That is the name by
which these ignorant people call the cholera."

For the next two hours the Maestro was very busy.

Firstly he gathered the "batas" who had been rich enough to attend
Isidro's little show and locked them up--with the impresario himself--in
the little town-jail close by. Then, after a vivid exhortation upon the
beauties of boiling water and reporting disease, he dismissed the school
for an indefinite period. After which, impressing the two town
prisoners, now temporarily out of home, he shouldered Isidro's pretty
box, tramped to the cemetery and directed the digging of a grave six
feet deep. When the earth had been scraped back upon the lonely little
object, he returned to town and transferred the awe-stricken playgoers
to his own house, where a strenuous performance took place.

Tolio, his boy, built a most tremendous fire outside and set upon it all
the pots and pans and caldrons and cans of his kitchen arsenal, filled
with water. When these began to gurgle and steam, the Maestro set
himself to stripping the horrified bunch in his room; one by one he
threw the garments out of the window to Tolio who, catching them,
stuffed them into the receptacles, poking down their bulging protest
with a big stick. Then the Maestro mixed an awful brew in an old
oil-can, and taking the brush which was commonly used to sleek up his
little pony, he dipped it generously into the pungent stuff and began an
energetic scrubbing of his now absolutely panic-stricken wards. When he
had done this to his satisfaction and thoroughly to their discontent, he
let them put on their still steaming garments and they slid out of the
house, aseptic as hospitals.

Isidro he kept longer. He lingered over him with loving and strenuous
care, and after he had