Page:Piccino and Other Child Stories (1897).djvu/15



IF he lived a hundred years—to be as old as Giuseppe, who was little Roberto's great-grand-father, and could only move when he was helped, and sat in the sun and played with bits of string—if he lived to be as old as that, he could never forget them, those two strange and dreadful days.

When sometimes he spoke of them to such of his playmates as were older than himself especially to Carlo, who tended sheep, and was afraid of nothing, even making jokes about the forestteri they said they thought he had been foolish; that as it seemed that the people had been ready to give him anything, it could not have been so bad but one could have tried to bear it, though they all agreed that it was dreadful about the water.

It is true, too, that as he grew older himself, after his mother died and his father married again the big Paula who flew into such rages and beat