Margherita writes it a dozen times in clear, flowing script with breathless, eager strokes.
“Signorina, Signorina, I write—I write about my mother. I write!” she joyously interpolates.
The other children look up with sympathetic interest, some leaving their work to crowd about the victorious Margherita. All of them voice their sympathy.
“Margherita writes,” they say. With the older ones who have already reached this wonder lap in their education there is a note of nonchalance.
“We also write,” they seem to say. With the tiny ones there is a note of hopeful promise.
“Some day we, too, will find that we can write,” they seem to say.
Margherita covers the blackboard with clear, big script. She erases it all for the sheer joy of assuring herself that she is able to write it all over again. When the luncheon hour comes, she looks back longingly at the blackboard as she lays plates on the little tables with dainty precision, places knife, fork, and spoon deftly, carries five tumblers at a time on a tray without dropping one, and passes a tureen of hot soup that is so large as to almost hide her small self. Even the happiness of being one of such a happy “party,” of eating one’s lunch of peas and sweet wheat bread and soup in the Children’s House, does not wholly satisfy Margherita to-day. Her big brown eyes are raised continually to her first written word.
Luncheon over, the children, with balls, hoops, and toys, romp out for an hour’s play in the garden.
“Margherita,” Bruno calls. “Come, we will have The Little One for a donkey, and I will harness him with you, who may be the horse!”