MY COMPANION CORETTI.
Sunday, 13th.
My father forgave me; but I remained rather sad and then my mother sent me, with the porter’s big son, to take a walk on the Corso. Half-way down the Corso, as we were passing a cart which was standing in front of a shop, I heard some one call me by name: I turned round; it was Coretti, my schoolmate, with chocolate-colored clothes and his catskin cap, all in a perspiration, but merry, with a big load of wood on his shoulders. A man who was standing in the cart was handing him an armful of wood at a time, which he took and carried into his father’s shop, where he piled it up in the greatest haste.
“What are you doing, Coretti?” I asked him.
“Don’t you see?” he answered, reaching out his arms to receive the load; “I am reviewing my lesson.”
I laughed; but he seemed to be serious, and, having grasped the armful of wood, he began to repeat as he ran, “The conjugation of the verb—consists in its variations according to number—according to number and person—”
And then, throwing down the wood and piling it, “according to the time—according to the time to which the action refers.”
And turning to the cart for another armful, “according to the mode in which the action is enunciated.”
It was our grammar lesson for the following day. “What would you have me do?” he said. “I am putting my time to use. My father has gone off with the man on business; my mother is ill. It falls to me to do the unloading. In the meantime, I am going over my grammar lesson. It is a difficult lesson to-day; I cannot succeed in getting it into my head.—My father said that he would be here at seven o’clock to give you your money,” he said to the man with the cart.