Page:Yiddish Tales.djvu/349

 REB SHLOIMEH 345

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 inter- ested 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 Eeb 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.

As to his hearers, he was overjoyed with them. When he saw that the workmen began to take interest in every book that was brought them to be bound, he smiled happily, and his eyes sparkled with delight.

And if it happened to be a book treating of the subjects on which they had heard something from Reb