ich meant that he wanted to talk to her, but was not quite sure
whether she would like that entertainment just now. But persevering
looks make themselves felt at last. Romola did presently turn away her
eyes from the distance and met Lillo's impatient dark gaze with a
brighter and brighter smile. He shuffled along the floor, still keeping
the book on his lap, till he got close to her and lodged his chin on
her knee.

"What is it, Lillo?" said Romola, pulling his hair back from his brow.
Lillo was a handsome lad, but his features were turning out to be more
massive and less regular than his father's. The blood of the Tuscan
peasant was in his veins.

"Mamma Romola, what am I to be?" he said, well contented that there was
a prospect of talking till it would be too late to con Petrarch any
longer.

"What should you like to be, Lillo? You might be a scholar. My father
was a scholar, you know, and taught me a great deal. That is the reason
why I can teach you."

"Yes," said Lillo, rather hesitatingly. "But he is old and blind in the
picture. Did he get a great deal of glory?"

"Not much, Lillo. The world was not always very kind to him, and he saw
meaner men than himself put into higher places because they could
flatter and say what was false. And then his dear son thought it right
to leave him and become a monk; and after that, my father, being blind
and lonely, felt unable to do the things that would have made his
learning of greater use to men, so that he might still have lived in
his works after he was in his grave."

"I should not like that sort of life," said Lillo, "I should like to be
something that would make me a great man, and very happy
besides--something that would not hinder me from having a good deal of
pleasure."

"That is not easy, my Lillo. It is only a poor sort of happiness that
could ever come by caring very much about our own narrow pleasures. We
can have the highest happiness, such as goes along with being a great
man, only by having wide thoughts, and much feeling for the rest of the
world as well as ourselves; and this sort of happiness often brings so
much pain with it, that we can tell it from pain only by its being what
we would choose before everything, because our souls see it is good.
There are so many things wrong and difficult in the world, that no man
can be great--he can hardly keep himself from wickedness--unless he
gives up thinking much about pleasure or rewards, and gets streng