Page:De Amicis - Heart, translation Hapgood, 1922.djvu/109

 plaything, he did not laugh once; yet I liked to go there.”

And my father answered, “That is because you value his society.”

Yes, but I also value Precossi's society—indeed it is a stronger feeling,—Precossi, the son of the blacksmith,—that thin, little fellow, who has kind, sad eyes and a frightened air; who is so timid that he says to every one, “Excuse me”; who is always sickly, and who, nevertheless, studies so much. His father goes home drunk, and beats him without the slightest reason in the world, and tosses his books and his copy-books in every direction. And Precossi comes to school with the black-and-blue marks on his face, and sometimes with his face all swollen, and his eyes red with weeping. But never, never can he be made to acknowledge that his father beats him.

“Your father has been beating you,” the boys say to him.

“That is not true! it is not true!” he cries, to avoid shaming his father.

“You did not burn this leaf,” the teacher says to him, showing him his work, half burned.

“Yes,” he replies, in a trembling voice; “I let it fall on the fire.”

But we know very well, nevertheless, that his drunken father overturned the table and the light with a kick, while the boy was doing his work. He lives in a garret of our house, reached by another staircase. The