when one sees him make that
hare's face. We went to playing with bits of wood: he possesses an
extraordinary skill at making towers and bridges, which seem to stand as
though by a miracle, and he works at it quite seriously, with the
patience of a man. Between one tower and another he told me about his
family: they live in a garret; his father goes to the evening school to
learn to read, and his mother is a washerwoman. And they must love him,
of course, for he is clad like a poor boy, but he is well protected from
the cold, with neatly mended clothes, and with his necktie nicely tied
by his mother's hands. His father, he told me, is a fine man,--a giant,
who has trouble in getting through doors, but he is kind, and always
calls his son "hare's face": the son, on the contrary, is rather small.

At four o'clock we lunched on bread and goat's-milk cheese, as we sat on
the sofa; and when we rose, I do not know why, but my father did not
wish me to brush off the back, which the little mason had spotted with
white, from his jacket: he restrained my hand, and then rubbed it off
himself on the sly. While we were playing, the little mason lost a
button from his hunting-jacket, and my mother sewed it on, and he grew
quite red, and began to watch her sew, in perfect amazement and
confusion, holding his breath the while. Then we gave him some albums of
caricatures to look at, and he, without being aware of it himself,
imitated the grimaces of the faces there so well, that even my father
laughed. He was so much pleased when he went away that he forgot to put
on his tattered cap; and when we reached the landing, he made a hare's
face at me once more in sign of his gratitude. His name is Antonio
Rabucco, and he is eight years and eight months old.

Do you know, my son, why I did not wish you to wipe off the sofa?
Because to wipe it while your companion was looking on would have
been almost the same as administering a reproof to him for having
soiled it. And this was not well, in the first place, because he
did not do it intentionally, and in the next, because he did it
with the clothes of his father, who had covered them with plaster
while at work; and what is contracted while at work is not dirt; it
is dust, lime, varnish, whatever you like, but it is not dirt.
Labor does not engender dirt. Never say of a laborer coming from
his work, "He is filthy." You should say, "He has on his ga