So when Reb Shloimeh showed himself in the street, they stared at him and shook their heads, as though to say, "Such a man—and gone to ruin!"
Reb Shloimeh saw it, and it cut him to the heart. Indeed, it brought the tears to his eyes, and he began to walk quicker in the direction of the bookbinder's.
At the bookbinder's they received him in friendly fashion, with a hearty "Welcome!" but he fancied that here also they looked at him askance, and therefore he gave a reason for his coming.
"Walking is hard work," he said, "one must have stopping-places."
With this same excuse he went there every day. He would sit for an hour or two, talking, telling stories, and at last he began to tell the "stories" which the teacher had told.
He sat in the centre of the room, and talked away merrily, with a pun here and a laugh there, and interested the workmen deeply. Sometimes they would all of one accord stop working, open their mouths, fix their eyes, and hang on his lips with an intelligent smile.
Or else they stood for a few minutes tense, motionless as statues, till Reb Shloimeh finished, before the master should interpose.
"Work, work—you will hear it all in time!" he would say, in a cross, dissatisfied tone.
And the workmen would unwillingly bend their backs once more over their task, but Reb Shloimeh remained a little thrown out. He lost the thread of what he was telling, began buttoning and unbuttoning his coat, and glanced guiltily at the binder.
But he went his own way nevertheless.