“Why are you in the third class if you have only been here two years?”
“Oh, the first is only for those who cannot read, I did not pass through it at all.”
“You could read already, when you came from your village?”
“Long before that.”
“Who taught you?”
Aleko shifted from one bare foot to another and thought for a moment.
“I do not know,” he said at last. “My father had three books, and there were newspapers which the coffee-house keeper threw away, and … I learnt.”
“If you finish the fourth class of the Parnassos, you will know a good many things.”
“What will be the benefit? When there is no more night school and I have to work with my hands all day, as the years pass I shall forget all they have taught me, and I shall be an unlearned man. The member who spoke at the examinations last year, told us that an unlearned man is like wood that has not been hewn.”
The boy pushed back his chair and stood up.