Page:De Amicis - Heart, translation Hapgood, 1922.djvu/195

Rh might have injured himself while at work about some machine; but he was trying to write, though very, very slowly.

What pleased me most was to behold in the seat of the “little mason,” on the very same bench and in the very same corner, his father, the mason, as huge as a gaint, who sat there all coiled up into a narrow space, with his chin on his fists and his eyes on his book, so absorbed that he hardly breathed. And there was no chance about it, for it was he himself who said to the principal the first evening he came to the school:—

“Signer Director, do me the favor to place me in the seat of my ‘hare's face.’” For he always calls his son so.

My father kept me there until the end, and in the street we saw many women with children in their arms, waiting for their husbands. At the entrance a change was effected: the husbands took the children in their arms, and the women took their books and copy-books; and in this wise they proceeded to their homes. For several minutes the street was filled with people and with noise. Then it grew silent, and all we could see was the tall, weary form of the principal going away.

Sunday, 5th.

It was what might have been expected. Franti, on being expelled by the principal, wanted to revenge himself on Stardi, and after school he waited for Stardi at a corner, when he was passing with his sister, whom