Page:De Amicis - Heart, translation Hapgood, 1922.djvu/216

186 He repeated, “We shall meet outside!” And I said, “We shall meet outside!” But I was thinking of what my father had once said to me, “If you are in the wrong, defend yourself, but do not fight.”

And I said to myself, “I will defend myself, but I will not fight.” But I was discontented, and I no longer listened to the master.

At last the moment of dismissal arrived. When I was alone in the street I perceived that he was following me. I stopped and waited for him, ruler in hand. He came up; I raised my ruler.

“No, Enrico,” he said, with his kindly smile, waving the ruler aside with his hand; “let us be friends again, as before.”

I stood still in amazement, and then I felt what seemed to be a push on my shoulders, and I found myself in his arms.

He kissed me, and said: “We'll have no more quarrels, will we?”

“Never again! never again!” I replied. And we parted content. But when I went home, and told my father all about it, thinking to give him pleasure, his face clouded over, and he said:—

“You should have been the first to offer your hand, since you were in the wrong.” Then he added, “You should not raise your ruler at a comrade who is better than you are—at the son of a soldier!”; and snatching the ruler from my hand, he broke it in two, and hurled it against the wall.