In spite of the bandillo I waited long for a pupil on the day of opening my school.  My little friend of the milk box deserted his own classes and stationed himself at my door.  After an interminable time he thrust his head inside the door and announced, “One pupil, letty.”

It was a very small girl in a long skirt with a train a yard long and with a 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.