Page:De Amicis - Heart, translation Hapgood, 1922.djvu/254

222 The master bent his head and gazed at the ground in thought, and muttered my father's name three or four times; the latter, meanwhile, watched him with intent and smiling eyes.

All at once the old man raised his face, with his eyes opened widely, and said slowly: “Alberto Bottini? the son of Bottini, the engineer? the one who lived in the Piazza della Consolata?”

“The same,” replied my father, holding out his hands.

“Then,” said the old man, “permit me, my dear sir, permit me;” and advancing, he embraced my father: his white head hardly reached the latter s shoulder. My father pressed his cheek to his brow.

“Have the goodness to come with me,” said the teacher. And without speaking any further he turned about and took the road to his dwelling.

In a few minutes we arrived at a garden plot in front of a tiny house with two doors, round one of which there was a fragment of whitewashed wall.

The teacher opened the second and ushered us into a room. There were four white walls: in one corner a cot bed with a blue-and-white checked coverlet; in another, a small table with a little library; four chairs, and an old map nailed to the wall. A pleasant odor of apples was noticeable.

We seated ourselves, all three. My father and his teacher were silent for several minutes.

“Bottini!” exclaimed the master at length, fixing his eyes on the brick floor where the sunlight formed a checker-board. “Oh! I remember well! Your mother was such a good woman! For a while, during