Just imagine whether you are not quite as able to feed him as Gigi is!" So she persuaded me.

But at first I did it to please her, for I told her our proverb, which says there can be nothing so untidy about a house as children and chickens.

He was such a dirty little boy, with only one shoe and a battered hat, and he was always singing at the top of his voice, and throwing things into the well in the cortile.
Mariuccia can read a little, though I never believed it until I found her one day teaching Nino his letters out of the _Vite dei Santi_.
That was probably the first time that her reading was ever of any use to her, and the last, for I think she knows the _Lives of the Saints_ by heart, and she will certainly not venture to read a new book at her age.

However, Nino very soon learned to know as much as she, and she will always be able to say that she laid the foundation of his education.

He soon forgot to throw handfuls of mud into the well, and Mariuccia washed him, and I bought him a pair of shoes, and we made him look very decent.