Page:De Amicis - Heart, translation Hapgood, 1922.djvu/24

 several of my classmates. Another one I am taken with is named Coretti, and he wears chocolate-colored trousers and a catskin cap: he is always jolly; he is the son of a huckster of wood, who was a soldier in the war of 1866, in the squadron of Prince Umberto, and they say that he has three medals. There is little Nelli, a poor hunchback, a weak boy, with a thin face. There is one who is very well dressed, who always wears fine Florentine plush, and is named Votini. On the bench in front of me there is a boy who is called Muratorino (“the little mason”) because his father is a mason: his face is as round as an apple, with a nose like a small ball; he possesses a special talent: he knows how to make a hare's face, and they all get him to do it, and then they laugh. He wears a little ragged cap, which he carries rolled up in his pocket like a handkerchief. Beside Muratorino sits Garoffi, a long, thin, silly fellow, with the nose and beak of a screech-owl, and very small eyes, who is always trading in little pens and images and match-boxes, and who writes the lesson on his nails, in order that he may read it on the sly. Then there is a young gentleman, Carlo Nobis, who seems very haughty; and he is between two boys I like,—one the son of a blacksmith, clad in a jacket which reaches to his knees, who is pale, as though from illness, who always has a frightened air, and who never laughs; and the other with red hair, who has a withered arm, and carries it hung in a sling from his neck; his father has gone away to America, and his mother goes about peddling pot-herbs. And there is another curious fellow,—my neighbor on the left,—Stardi—small and thickset, with no neck,—a gruff fellow, who speaks