Page:De Amicis - Heart, translation Hapgood, 1922.djvu/336

302 he stared at all four walls, without seeing anything.

The door opened; a teacher entered, dressed in black, holding a little girl by the hand.

Father and daughter gazed at each other for an instant; then flew into each other's arms, with a cry.

The girl was dressed in a white and reddish striped material, with a gray apron. She is a little taller than I. She cried, and clung to her father's neck with both arms.

Her father disengaged himself, and began to look her over from head to foot, panting as though he had run a long way; and he exclaimed: “Ah, how she has grown! How pretty she has become! Oh, my dear, poor Gigia! My poor mute child!—Are you her teacher, signora? Tell her to make some of her signs to me; for I shall be able to understand something, and then I will learn little by little. Tell her to make me understand something with her gestures.”

The teacher smiled, and said in a low voice to the girl, “Who is this man who has come to see you?”

And the girl replied with a smile, in a coarse, strange, harsh voice, like that of a savage who was speaking for the first time in our language, but with a distinct pronunciation, “He is my fa-ther.”

The gardener fell back a pace, and shrieked like a madman: “She speaks. Is it possible! Is it possible! She speaks! Can you speak, my child? can you speak? Say something to me: you can speak?” and he embraced her afresh, and kissed her thrice on the brow. “But it is not with signs that