“It would be sufficient for me alone, but who would send money to my mother and the little ones, if I did not work?”
“That is just what I meant; you go on working for them, instead of getting more learning for yourself, as you would like to do. Well, that is a brave deed!”
“But, no,” said the boy, his face puckered with perplexity, “that is not brave. I do not like it at all!”
“But you do it.”
Aleko got up from his knees.
“I do not do it; it does itself. How can I help it?” then, as he shouldered his box to go, he asked, “After I have read to-morrow, will you tell me about some more great men?”
“I will tell you all I know; … only come!”
VI
And as the days became hotter and hotter, as May melted into June and June into July, Kyr Themistocli got to depend more and more on the boy’s daily visits, and as he was an old man and had lost many things in his life, he would tremble sometimes at the thought of losing this new joy. For it was a joy as all creating and all planting is a joy. In all the years he had been a schoolmaster, it was the first time he had come across an intellect where all seeds once sown bore fruit; where there were no barren spots.