The older man shook his head.
“That is the way of the world. My son can go to school all day, and every day, and his one object is to stay away.”
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” asked the officer of Aleko.
“I do not know … yet,” he answered slowly. “I want to learn how to do many things, and then to go and do them.”
“You could not wish better,” said his boxing master. “I think you will be a man anyway. Here is your money, and run off to the Parnassos; I am not coming this evening; it is too hot for boxing.” Then turning to the officer he quoted smilingly:—
ὡς χαρίεν ἔσθ’ ἄνθρωπος ὅταν ἄνθρωπος ᾖ
Aleko heard him, though he did not understand; and as he ran down Stadium Street, he kept repeating the words to himself for fear of forgetting them, and when he sat down in his place in the class, the first thing he did was to borrow a stump of a pencil from his neighbour, and write the words on the fly leaf of his reading book. Of course they were spelled and accented all wrong, but they could be read quite plainly. The arithmetic lesson came last, and Aleko was the last pupil called up to the blackboard, so that when the boys were leaving the class he ventured to show his sentence to the schoolmaster.
“What does this mean, master?”
The schoolmaster took up the book.
“Why do you write on your school books?” he asked sharply.