Page:De Amicis - Heart, translation Hapgood, 1922.djvu/42



Friday, 4th.

were but two days of vacation, yet it seemed a long time without seeing Garrone. The more I know him, the better I like him; and so it is with all the rest, except with the overbearing, who have nothing to say to him, because he does not permit them to bully. Every time a big boy raises his hand against a little one, the little one shouts, “Garrone!” and the big one stops striking him.

His father is an engine-driver on the railway. Garrone began school late, because he was ill for two years. He is the tallest and the strongest of the class; he lifts a bench with one hand; he is always eating; and he is good. Whatever he is asked for, a pencil, rubber, paper, or penknife, he lends or gives it; and he neither talks nor laughs in school: he always sits perfectly still on a bench that is too narrow for him, with his spine curved forward, and his big head between his shoulders; and when I look at him, he smiles at me with his eyes half closed, as much as to say, “Well, Enrico, are we friends?”

He makes me laugh, because, tall and broad as he is, he has a jacket, trousers, and sleeves which are too small for him, and too short; a cap which will not stay on his head; a threadbare cloak; coarse shoes; and