He cast his eyes to the ground and watched 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 centre 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 cauldrons 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 oilcan, 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 him externally clean proceeded to dose him internally from a little red bottle. Isidro took everything—the terrific scrubbing, the exaggerated dosing, the ruinous treatment of his pantaloons—with wonder-eyed serenity.