"Yours is like a cock," he said, "he has a red cap and a great hoarse voice. I had to put up with him for a year. May the devil bite his heels!"
The school was at the far side of Nuoro, in a convent surrounded by dreary gardens. Anania's class-room was on the ground floor, its windows facing the deserted street. The walls were flecked with dust; the master's desk had been gnawed by rats; the benches were adorned with spots of ink, with carvings, with names scribbled like hieroglyphics.
Anania felt defrauded when instead of the master like a cock he saw a mistress, dressed in the costume of the place, a pale, small woman with a little moustache just like Aunt Tatàna's.
Forty idle children made the room lively. Anania was the tallest of them all. Perhaps for this reason the little mistress turned oftenest to him. Besides the moustache she had two terrible, fierce, dark eyes, and she addressed Anania by his surname, speaking partly in Italian, partly in Sardinian. He was honoured by her persistent attention, though he found it a little tedious. At the end of three hours he was actually able to read and to write two letters. One of them was a mere round O, but that did not detract from the importance of his attainment. At eleven o'clock he was dead sick of the school and the mistress and his stiff, smart clothes. He thought longingly of the courtyard, the elder tree, the basket of fruit into which he was in the habit of thrusting predatory fingers. He yawned. Was the going away hour never coming? Many of the children were in tears, and the mistress wasted her breath preaching about order and the love of lessons.
At last the door burst open. The school officer—also dressed in costume—showed his shaven face for a single instant and shouted, "Time!" The children made one simultaneous rush to the door, tumbling over each other and shouting. Anania was left to the last, and the mistress began to pat his head with her scraggy fingers.
"Yes, Ma'am."
"Bravo! Remember me to your mother."
That, of course, referred to Aunt Tatàna. He suddenly felt quite fond of his teacher, who now hurried after the rest of the noisy children.
"What style of going out is that?" she cried, capturing as many as she could. "Come now! Two and two! In a proper line!"
She placed them in order, and they filed down the corridor through the door, out into the street. There they were set free and they scattered like birds escaped from a net, screaming and jumping. Older and more serious scholars issued from the other class-rooms, all in their rows. Bustianeddu fell upon Anania, slamming his copy books on the child's head and seizing his arm.