Page:De Amicis - Heart, translation Hapgood, 1922.djvu/218

188 otherwise than as having held you in my arms when a baby, of having loved our father and mother with you, of having watched you grow up, of having been for years your most faithful companion. But do you write me a kind word in this same copy-book, and I will come for it and read it before the evening. In the meanwhile, to show you that I am not angry with you, and noting that you are weary, I have copied for you the monthly story, Blood of Romagna, which you were to have copied for the little sick mason. Look in the left drawer of your table; I have been writing all night, while you were asleep. Write me a kind word, Enrico, I beg of you.


 * I am not worthy to kiss your hands.—.

(Monthly Story.)

That evening the house of Ferruccio was more silent than was its wont. The father, who kept a little dry-goods shop, had gone to Forli to make some purchases, and his wife had accompanied him, with Luigina, a baby, whom she was taking to a doctor, that he might operate on a diseased eye; they were not to return until the following morning. It was almost midnight. The woman who came to do the work by day had gone away at nightfall.

In the house there was only the grandmother with the paralyzed legs, and Ferruccio, a lad of thirteen. It was a small house of but one story, situated on the highway, at a gunshot's distance from a village not