This new proof of lofty and patronising care exasperated her. She sent the man back with a message declaring that she needed no assistant.
Two weeks later he was again before her with a note. With a vague feeling of disappointment she saw that it was typewritten. It said:
"The Provincial Superintendent has transferred Abada from my town to yours. I cannot and you must not disregard the order."
Her cheeks flamed a little when she reflected that the two weeks passed between the two offers were just time enough for the exchange of correspondence between Cantalacan and Bacolod.
But she soon found Abada invaluable. He had evidently been subjected to a rigid training; naturally he took upon himself all the smaller troublesome details of her work. Also he knew his own people thoroughly and was precious in lifting for her the uniform veil of stolidity. And he had ingenuity. He propounded a plan by which the children came washed to school; he interested the parents in the clothing of their offspring, so that now the room rustled with starch. The rivalry of the town factions he diverted adroitly into a race for the favour of the Maestra.
After a while, though, she noticed that Abada's brilliant suggestions came always on Monday mornings; also that on Sundays the little mild man, a stick in hand, wended his way across the plaza and then down the road leading to Cantalacan. This vexed her, and the next propositions of her assistant were ignominiously rejected. That morning she mapped out her own course. She planted vines that with tropical vigour forthwith began to climb the bare walls. At the windows she hung wonderful orchids. She draped two American flags in flaming panoply behind her desk, improvised of dry goods boxes. The supplies had come from Bacolod (very strangely, in ox-carts belonging to the municipality of Cantalacan). The maps upon the walls, the blackboards and charts upon their tripods, the shelves of books gave to the place an air of study and quiet. Thanks to Abada's constant visits to parents, his free use (she did not know that) of Don Francisco's name, the attendance was rising by leaps and bounds; the schoolhouse was full of gentle brown goblins. Her soul was sweet with the feeling of being loved.
And yet she could not shake the old tyranny. An emptiness was within her; an emptiness it was, and yet it weighed like lead. Above, about her, the alien, incomprehensible Land flamed, fierce, inimical. She dreamed of grassy meadows beneath apple trees; through the flowering branches voices passed, voices of her own kin and race, sympathetic and intimate.
One day she had an idea that filled her with wild joy. She would give a dinner and invite Mr. Wilson and Mr. Tillman.
The invitations were sent and accepted. On Saturday she went to the market. She passed amid the squatting women like a humming bird, flitting hither and thither, stopping a moment to sip here or there, then whirring off again with her store. And when she returned, her tawny parasol tilted back upon her shoulder in an attitude a little weary, her two boys behind her bore baskets filled with wonderful and coloured things. She overhauled her stores and set to work immediately. A man she sent down to the sea to fish for her a lapo-lapo. And all day she measured and mixed and beat and prepared for the morrow. She was up with the sun the next day, and all morning she flitted about, humming like a bee building its honey-home, a white apron pinned to her dress, her face flushed, her hands floury. At noon Wilson came in. She greeted him joyously, and then leaving him with her latest magazine, whirred off again to some mysterious final crisis in the kitchen.
At one o'clock a tao came with a note. Mr. Tillman was very sorry, but something unexpected and imperative had called him away. He would not be present.