Page:De Amicis - Heart, translation Hapgood, 1922.djvu/246

214 flowerets pulled from the vases. One child, with a bandaged head, who was determined to be heard at any cost, stammered out to her some story about a head-over-heels tumble, not one word of which was intelligible; another insisted that my mother should bend down, and then whispered in her ear, “My father makes brushes.”

And all this while a thousand accidents were happening here and there which caused the teachers to hasten up. Children wept because they could not untie a knot in their handkerchiefs. Others disputed, with scratches and shrieks, the halves of an apple. One child, who had fallen face downward over a little bench which had been overturned, wept amid the ruins, and could not rise.

Before her departure my mother took three or four of them in her arms, and they ran up from all quarters to be taken also, their faces smeared with yolk of egg and orange juice. One caught her hands; another her finger, to look at her ring; another tugged at her watch chain; another tried to seize her by the hair.

“Take care,” the teacher said to her; “they will tear your clothes all to pieces.”

But my mother cared nothing for her dress, and she continued to kiss them, and they pressed closer and closer to her: those who were nearest, with their arms held out as though they were desirous of climbing; the more distant trying to make their way through the crowd, and all crying:—

“Good-bye! good-bye! good-bye!”

At last she succeeded in escaping from the garden. And they all ran and thrust their faces through the