tening us with his hand, to prevent our
tearing holes in our trousers.

Precossi whistled; I had never heard him whistle before. The younger
Coretti did the same, as he went along. That little fellow knows
how to make everything with his jack-knife a finger's length
long,--mill-wheels, forks, squirts; and he insisted on carrying the
other boys' things, and he was loaded down until he was dripping with
perspiration, but he was still as nimble as a goat. Derossi halted every
moment to tell us the names of the plants and insects. I don't
understand how he manages to know so many things. And Garrone nibbled at
his bread in silence; but he no longer attacks it with the cheery bites
of old, poor Garrone! now that he has lost his mother. But he is always
as good as bread himself. When one of us ran back to obtain the momentum
for leaping a ditch, he ran to the other side, and held out his hands to
us; and as Precossi was afraid of cows, having been tossed by one when
a child, Garrone placed himself in front of him every time that we
passed any. We mounted up to Santa Margherita, and then went down the
decline by leaps, rolls, and slides. Precossi tumbled into a thorn-bush,
and tore a hole in his blouse, and stood there overwhelmed with shame,
with the strip dangling; but Garoffi, who always has pins in his jacket,
fixed it so that it was not perceptible, while the other kept saying,
"Excuse me, excuse me," and then he set out to run once more.

Garoffi did not waste his time on the way; he picked salad herbs and
snails, and put every stone that glistened in the least into his pocket,
supposing that there was gold and silver in it. And on we went, running,
rolling, and climbing through the shade and in the sun, up and down,
through all the lanes and cross-roads, until we arrived dishevelled and
breathless at the crest of a hill, where we seated ourselves to take our
lunch on the grass.

We could see an immense plain, and all the blue Alps with their white
summits. We were dying of hunger; the bread seemed to be melting. The
elder Coretti handed us our portions of sausage on gourd leaves. And
then we all began to talk at once about the teachers, the comrades who
had not been able to come, and the examinations. Precossi was rather
ashamed to eat, and Garrone thrust the best bits of his share into his
mouth by force. Coretti was seated next his father, with his legs
crossed; they seem more like two brothers than father and son,