Page:The fortunes of Fifi (IA fortunesoffifi00seawiala).pdf/125

 ever a better boy than I. But we had other amusements than that. We loved to climb into the blue hills about Cesena, and when we were old enough to be trusted by ourselves we would sometimes spend days in those far-off hills, with nothing but bread and cheese and wild grapes to live on. We slept at night on the ground, rolled in our blankets. We were hardy youngsters, and I never had sweeter sleep than in those summer nights on the hard ground, with the kind stars keeping watch over us."

Fifi said no word. The old man was living over again that sweet, young time, and from it was borne the laughter, faint and afar off, the smiles so softly tender, the tears robbed of all their saltness; he was once more, in thought, a little boy with his little playmate on the sunny slopes of the Apennines.

Presently he spoke again, looking into Fifi's eyes, so like those of the dead and gone comrade of the old Cesena days.

"Barnabas, although of better natural capacity than I, did not love the labor of reading. He chose that I should read, and tell him what I read; and so he knew all that I knew and more besides,