328 PINSKI
but it was no good, his head was a jumble of all the new sciences. By means of the little he had just learned, he wanted to understand and know everything, to fash- ion a whole body out of a single hair, and he thought, and thought, and thought. . . .
Sunday, when the teacher came, Eeb Shloimeh told him that he wished to have a little talk with him. Mean- time he sat down to listen. The hour during which the teacher taught the children was too long for him, and he scarcely took his eyes off the clock.
"Do you want another pupil?" he asked the teacher, stepping with him into his own room. He felt as though he were getting red, and he made a very angry face.
"Why not?" answered the teacher, looking hard into Eeb Shloimeh's face. Reb Shloimeh looked at the floor, his brows, as was usual with him in those days, drawn together.
"You understand me a pupil " he stammered, "you understand not a little boy a pupil an elderly man you understand quite another sort "
"Well, well, we shall see!" answered the teacher, smiling.
"I mean myself!" he snapped out with great dis- pleasure, as if he had been forced to confess some very evil deed. "Well, I have sinned what do you want of me?"
"Oh, but I should be delighted!" and the teacher smiled.
"I always said I meant to be a doctor!" said Reb Shloimeh, trying to joke. But his features contracted again directly, and he began to talk about the terms,
