After going a few steps, I regain control of myself, and turn to him and say (I have already asked his name):
“Mind, Alexander! … the proverb says, ‘Be slow to promise, but having promised, keep it!’ ”
“Yes, that’s so. It will be safe.”
I have seldom experienced a more joyful feeling than I had when I left him.
I have omitted to say that during our talk I had offered to give him some leaflets on drink and some booklets. [A man in a neighbouring village posted up one of those same leaflets on the wall outside his house lately, but it was pulled down and destroyed by the policeman.] He thanked me, and said he would come and fetch them in the dinner-hour.
He did not come in the dinner-hour, and I, sinner that I am, suspected that our whole conversation was not so important to him as it seemed to me, and that he did not want the books, and that, in general, I had attributed to him what was not in him. But he came in the evening, all perspiring from his work and from the walk. After finishing his work, he had ridden home, put up the plough, attended to his horse, and had now come a quarter of a mile to fetch the books.
I was sitting, with some visitors, on a splendid veranda, looking out on to flowerbeds with ornamental vases on flower-set mounds—in short, in luxurious surroundings such as one is always ashamed of when one enters into human relations with working people.
I went out to him, and at once asked, “Have you not changed your mind? Will you really keep your promise?”
And again, with the same kindly smile, he replied, “Of course! … I have already told mother. She’s glad, and thanks you.”