The three months of vacation in the country have passed like a dream. This morning my mother took me to the Baretti schoolhouse to have me enter for the third elementary grade: I was thinking of the country, and went unwillingly (不情愿地). In front of the school so many people had collected that the policeman found it hard to keep the entrance clear. Near the door, I felt myself touched on the shoulder: it was my master of the second grade, cheerful, as usual, and with his red hair ruffled. He said to me: "So we are to part forever, Enrico?" I knew it well, yet the words pained me.
We made our way in with difficulty. I was glad to see once more that large room on the ground floor, with the doors leading to the seven classes, where I had passed nearly every day for three years. My schoolmistress of the first upper class greeted me from the door of the class room, and said: "Enrico, you are going to the floor above, this year. I shall not even see you pass by any more!" And she looked sadly at me.
The school seemed so small and gloomy to me when I thought of the woods and the mountains where I had passed the summer! I thought again, too, of my master in the second class, who was so good, and who always smiled at us, and was so small that he seemed to be one of us; and I was sad that I should no longer see him, with his tumbled red hair. I said to myself: "This is my first day. There are nine months more. What work, what monthly examinations, what tiredness!" I wanted to see my mother when I came out, and I ran to kiss her hand! She said to me:
"Courage, Enrico! we will study together." And I returned home satisfied. But I no longer have my master, with his kind, merry smile, and school does not seem so nice to me as it did before.
