to humiliate
myself. I looked at him out of the corner of my eye, and I saw his coat
ripped on the shoulder,--perhaps because he had carried too much
wood,--and I felt that I loved him; and I said to myself, "Courage!" But
the words, "excuse me," stuck in my throat. He looked at me askance from
time to time, and he seemed to me to be more grieved than angry. But at
such times I looked malevolently at him, to show him that I was not
afraid.

He repeated, "We shall meet outside!" And I said, "We shall meet
outside!" But I was thinking of what my father had once said to me, "If
you are wronged, defend yourself, but do not fight."

And I said to myself, "I will defend myself, but I will not fight." But
I was discontented, and I no longer listened to the master. At last the
moment of dismissal arrived. When I was alone in the street I perceived
that he was following me. I stopped and waited for him, ruler in hand.
He approached; I raised my ruler.

"No, Enrico," he said, with his kindly smile, waving the ruler aside
with his hand; "let us be friends again, as before."

I stood still in amazement, and then I felt what seemed to be a hand
dealing a push on my shoulders, and I found myself in his arms. He
kissed me, and said:--

"We'll have no more altercations between us, will we?"

"Never again! never again!" I replied. And we parted content. But when I
returned home, and told my father all about it, thinking to give him
pleasure, his face clouded over, and he said:--

"You should have been the first to offer your hand, since you were in
the wrong." Then he added, "You should not raise your ruler at a comrade
who is better than you are--at the son of a soldier!" and snatching the
ruler from my hand, he broke it in two, and hurled it against the wall.

MY SISTER.

Friday, 24th.

Why, Enrico, after our father has already reproved you for having
behaved badly to Coretti, were you so unkind to me? You cannot
imagine the pain that you caused me. Do you not know that when you
were a baby, I stood for hours and hours beside your cradle,
instead of playing with my companions, and that when you were ill,
I got out of bed every night to feel whether your forehead was
burning? Do you not know, you who grieve your sister, that if a
tremendous misfortune should overtake us, I should be a mother to
you and love you like my son? Do you not know that when our father
and mot