Page:De Amicis - Heart, translation Hapgood, 1922.djvu/17

 ran away from the benches; others, when they saw their parents leave, began to cry, and the parents had to go back and comfort them, or take them away; while the teachers were in despair.

My little brother was placed in the class of Mistress Delcati: I was put with Master Perboni, upstairs on the first floor.

At ten o'clock we were all in our classes: fifty-four of us; only fifteen or sixteen of my companions of the second class, among them, Derossi, the one who always gets the first prize.

The school seemed so small and gloomy to me when I thought of the woods and the mountains where I had passed the summer! I thought again, too, of my master in the second class, who was so good, and who always smiled at us, and was so small that he seemed to be one of us; and I grieved that I should no longer see him, with his tumbled red hair. Our present teacher is tall; he has no beard; his hair is gray and long; and he has a straight line running crosswise on his forehead. He has a big voice, and he looks at us fixedly, one after the other, as though he were reading our very thoughts; and he never smiles. I said to myself: "This is my first day. There are nine months more. What work, what monthly examinations, what weariness!" I wanted to see my mother when I came out, and I ran to kiss her hand! She said to me:—

"Courage, Enrico! we will study together." And I returned home content. But I no longer have my master, with his kind, merry smile, and school does not seem so nice to me as it did before.