We climbed up the water-course in the mountain-side, up to a smooth
little lawn under the olive trees, where daisies were flowering and
gladioli were in bud. It was a tiny little lawn of grass in a level
crevice, and sitting there we had the world below us--the lake, the
distant island, the far-off low Verona shore.
Then 'John' began to talk, and he talked continuously, like a foreigner,
not saying the things he would have said in Italian, but following the
suggestion and scope of his limited English.
In the first place, he loved his father--it was 'my father, my father'
always. His father had a little shop as well as the inn in the village
above. So John had had some education. He had been sent to Brescia and
then to Verona to school, and there had taken his examinations to become
a civil engineer. He was clever, and could pass his examinations. But he
never finished his course. His mother died, and his father,
disconsolate, had wanted him at home. Then he had gone back, when he was
sixteen or seventeen, to the village beyond the lake, to be with his
father and to look after the shop.
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