Page:De Amicis - Heart, translation Hapgood, 1922.djvu/55

 brightening up the fire, and driving the cat off the chest of drawers.

“Do you want anything else, mamma?” he asked, as he took the cup from her. “Have you taken the two spoonfuls of syrup? When it is all gone, I will make a trip to the apothecary's. The wood is unloaded. At four o'clock I will put the meat on the stove, as you told me; and when the butter-woman passes, I will give her those eight soldi. Everything will go on well; so don't give it a thought.”

“Thanks, my son!” replied the woman. “That will do. Poor boy! he thinks of everything.”

She insisted that I should take a lump of sugar; and then Coretti showed me a little picture, the photograph of his father dressed as a soldier, with the medal for bravery which he had won in 1866, in the troop of Prince Umberto: he had the same face as his son, with the same vivacious eyes and merry smile.

We went back to the kitchen. “I have found the last answer,” said Coretti; and he added on his copy-book, Harness is also made of it. “The rest I will do this evening; I shall sit up later. How happy you are, to have time to study and to go to walk, too!” And still gay and active, he re-entered the shop, and began to place pieces of wood on the horse and to saw them, saying: “This is gymnastics: it is quite different from the throw your arms forward. I want my father to find all this wood sawed when he gets home; how glad he will be! The worst part of it is that after sawing I make T's and L's which look like snakes, so the teacher says. What am I to do? I shall tell him that I have to move my arms about. The