Page:De Amicis - Heart, translation Hapgood, 1922.djvu/20

 the words of our teacher, when we noticed that the street was full of people, who were pressing close to the door of the schoolhouse. Suddenly my father said:—

“An accident! The year is beginning badly!”

We passed through with some difficulty. The big hall was crowded with parents and children, whom the teachers had not succeeded in placing in the classrooms, and all were turning towards the principal's room, and we heard the words, “Poor boy! Poor Robetti!”

Over their heads, at the end of the room, we could see the helmet of a policeman, and the bald head of the principal; then a gentleman with a tall hat entered, and all said, “That is the doctor.” My father inquired of a master, “What has happened?” “A wheel has passed over his foot,” replied the latter. “His foot has been crushed,” said another. He was a boy belonging to the second class, who, on his way to school through the Dora Grossa street, seeing a little child of the lowest class, who had run away from its mother, fall down in the middle of the street, a few paces from an omnibus which was bearing down upon it, had hastened forward boldly, caught up the child, and placed it in safety; but, as he had not withdrawn his own foot quickly enough, the wheel of the omnibus had passed over it. He is the son of a captain of artillery.

While we were being told this, a woman entered the big hall, like mad, and forced her way through the crowd: she was Robetti's mother, who had been sent for. Another woman hastened towards her, and flung