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were apparently too large for her, and it gave her a peculiar gait when she walked in them. There seemed to Miles to be too much extraneous movement in her walk.
    The other one, Esperanza Clueca, was more reassuring. She was neatly dressed and stood at attention. Her eyes were set rather closely together, and she had a long, severe upper lip. She had obtained permission from Miles to be away from her job from four in the afternoon to eight in the evening five days a week. She was attending school and would one day become a schoolteacher. Esperanza spoke politely and quietly, but with an ominous firmness, whereas Margarita had a peculiarly gay and piercing voice.
    When he looked at the seven of them as a group, he could almost believe that the services might run smoothly.
    He cleared his throat and said, “There is coming thirteen students. I am going in the bus tomorrow, picking up the first two students. El Señor Torrigan is going to Mexico Friday to meet others. The rest are coming in their own cars. The food, each meal, is sufficient to feed the two teachers, the thirteen students, and the eight of us who now stand here, and sometimes there is guests. I am clear?”
    There were nods and little murmurs of agreement.
    “Breakfast is from eight to nine. Lunch is from noon to one-thirty. Dinner is from eight-thirty until ten. Felipe is doing thenecessary buying in the market. Rosalinda is telling Felipe what is needed. Fidelio is driving Felipe to the market, and to get the mail each day. But the bus is not going anywhere until it is with my permission. And at all times everything is made very clean here. I am clear?”
    Rosalinda giggled and said, “I will buy what is needed, señor. You will give me the money and I will go in the red bus and buy the things we need.”
    “She will stay in the kitchen where she belongs,” Felipe said.
    “Then I will not use what he buys,” Rosalina said and giggled some more.
    “Then you are both going together,” Miles directed. Rosalinda and Felipe looked at each other with hostility.
    “And we will take Pepe and Alberto to carry the purchases, señor,” Felipe said.
    “Uh … it is well,” Miles said. He had the feeling he had been outmaneuvered.
    Margarita dropped her cigarette on the floor and stepped on it with a tall red shoe. Miles looked at the cigarette and swallowed and said, “It is important all things are clean. It is important our students are … happy. We are working hard this summer making them clean and happy, no?”
    “Sí señor,”
they said in smiling chorus. He smiled back and squared his shoulders and marched out of the kitchen. He heard them all start chattering at once, Margarita’s voice more clear than all the others, proclaiming, “I too shall ride in the red bus, Fidelio!”
    On Thursday morning the red bus gasped, choked and died. Fidelio blew the horn angrily for a few moments after he found that he could not start it again. He got out and kicked the door on the driver’s side and stalked away. Miles got out and examined the new dent. Miles went in and phoned Las Rosas, but Gloria was not in her room. He phoned Antonio Vasques, the mechanic, and made a report on the symptoms the bus had shown just before expiring. Antonio sounded most distressed and said that he would most certainly try to come and visit the bus as soon as possible.
    When, by eleven-thirty, he had not been able to reach Gloria, he looked for Agnes Partridge Keeley, and found her outside the wall being solemnly watched by four small children and a large brown cow as she was finishing one of her nimble watercolors of the shacks on the lip of the barranca. She sat in the sun, flushed and humid, biting her lips as she worked.
    Miles explained about the bus and she said she would be delighted to drive him to Mexico City to pick up the two gentlemen, the first students to arrive.
    As, a half-hour later, they drifted almost silently up the mountain highway in the big gray