l from the shop at that moment. It
was a woman who had come to buy some little fagots.

"Here I am!" replied Coretti; and he sprang out, weighed the fagots,
took the money, ran to a corner to enter the sale in a shabby old
account-book, and returned to his work, saying, "Let's see if I can
finish that sentence." And he wrote, _travelling-bags, and knapsacks for
soldiers_. "Oh, my poor coffee is boiling over!" he exclaimed, and ran
to the stove to take the coffee-pot from the fire. "It is coffee for
mamma," he said; "I had to learn how to make it. Wait a while, and we
will carry it to her; you'll see what pleasure it will give her. She has
been in bed a whole week.--Conjugation of the verb! I always scald my
fingers with this coffee-pot. What is there that I can add after the
soldiers' knapsacks? Something more is needed, and I can think of
nothing. Come to mamma."

He opened a door, and we entered another small room: there Coretti's
mother lay in a big bed, with a white kerchief wound round her head.

"Ah, brave little master!" said the woman to me; "you have come to visit
the sick, have you not?"

Meanwhile, Coretti was arranging the pillows behind his mother's back,
readjusting the bedclothes, brightening up the fire, and driving the cat
off the chest of drawers.

"Do you want anything else, mamma?" he asked, as he took the cup from
her. "Have you taken the two spoonfuls of syrup? When it is all gone, I
will make a trip to the apothecary's. The wood is unloaded. At four
o'clock I will put the meat on the stove, as you told me; and when the
butter-woman passes, I will give her those eight soldi. Everything will
go on well; so don't give it a thought."

"Thanks, my son!" replied the woman. "Go, my poor boy!--he thinks of
everything."

She insisted that I should take a lump of sugar; and then Coretti showed
me a little picture,--the photograph portrait of his father dressed as a
soldier, with the medal for bravery which he had won in 1866, in the
troop of Prince Umberto: he had the same face as his son, with the same
vivacious eyes and his merry smile.

We went back to the kitchen. "I have found the thing," said Coretti; and
he added on his copy-book, _horse-trappings are also made of it_. "The
rest I will do this evening; I shall sit up later. How happy you are, to
have time to study and to go to walk, too!" And still gay and active, he
re-entered the shop, and began to place pieces of wood on the horse and
to