“Why,” said Carlo, “you’ll find all these things are nothing when you are used to them. But I cannot explain my rule to you here broiling in the sun. Besides, it will not be the work of a day, I promise you; but come and see us at your leisure hours, and we’ll study it together. I have a great notion we shall become friends; and, to begin, step in with me now,” said Carlo, “and eat a little macaroni with us. I know it is ready by this time. Besides, you’ll see my father, and he’ll show you plenty of rules and compasses, as you like such things; and then I’ll go home with you in the cool of the evening, and you shall show me your melons and vines, and teach me, in time, something of gardening. Oh, I see we must be good friends, just made for each other; so come in—no ceremony.” Carlo was not mistaken in his predictions; he and Francisco became very good friends, spent all their leisure hours together, either in Carlo’s workshop or in Francisco’s vineyard, and they mutually improved each other. Francisco, before he saw his friend’s rule, knew but just enough of arithmetic to calculate in his head the price of the fruit which he sold in the market; but with Carlo’s assistance, and the ambition to understand the tables and figures upon the wonderful rule, he set to work in earnest, and in due time, satisfied both himself and his master. “Who knows but these things that I am learning now may be of some use to me before I die?” said Francisco, as he was sitting one morning with his tutor, the carpenter. “To be sure it will,” said the carpenter, putting down his compasses, with which he was drawing a circle—“Arithmetic is a most useful, and I was going to say necessary thing to be known by men in all stations; and a little trigonometry does no harm. In short, my maxim is, that no knowledge comes amiss; for a man’s head is of as much use to him as his hands; and even more so. “A word to the wise will always suffice.” “Besides, to say nothing of making a fortune, is not there a great pleasure in being something of a scholar, and being able to pass one’s time with one’s book, and one’s compasses and pencil? Safe companions these for young and old. No one gets into mischief that has pleasant things to think of and to do when alone; and I know, for my part, that trigonometry is—” Here the carpenter, just as he was going to pronounce a fresh panegyric upon his favourite trigonometry, was interrupted by the sudden entrance of his little daughter Rosetta, all in tears: a very unusual spectacle, for, taking the year round, she shed fewer tears than any child of her age in Naples. “Why, my dear good humoured little Rosetta, what has happened? Why these large tears?” said her brother Carlo, and he went up to her, and wiped them from her cheeks. “And these that are going over the bridge of the nose so fast? I must stop these tears, too,” said Carlo.