He sprinted fifty yards, leaped an eighteen-foot ditch, hurdled a little goat, bucked a carabao around till its tail was where its head had been, and bounded into the schoolroom.
Two hundred brown niños sprang to their feet.
"Guda morrneen," they howled, in unison.
"Good-morning," answered the Maestro, briskly. "Come, let's get at this. No shirking, quick! Arm exercise! One, two; one, two."
He led them through a furious set of exercises in which he himself took part enthusiastically, the perspiration cascading down his nose.
"You poor, scrawny weaklings," he said, at last, beaming upon the breathless little assemblage. "Never you mind; I'll make men of you."
Then he started to go. "Give them reading," he shouted to his native assistant from the door, "and breathing exercises every half hour."
But he came back, on an after-thought, and placed under the nose of his faithful colleague the piece of sodden paper he had picked up on the plaza.
The man's skin went yellow beneath the brown. "Papa Isio," he whispered.
"Just, what I thought," said the Maestro, nodding to himself. "And he says he is coming here, doesn't he?"