The boy continued brushing, since no questions had been asked of him. After a while the Canon went away, shaking his head and sighing about how difficult the young people were getting and how the old ways would soon be lost forever.

“I wonder!” he mused to Father Conroy at one of their stilted Saturday-night interviews. “He’s such a strange, quiet boy, I wonder, Father, if he’s not thinking of a vocation.”

Father Conroy looked up in surprise from the list of dues, then laughed. “Well, I suppose he’s as likely to be thinking of that as of your ancilla inside.”

“Father!” Fitzmaurice flushed and looked around nervously. “I do wish you wouldn’t. It’s not very fitting.” He watched in some alarm as Father Conroy got up (he always seemed to be anticipating a physical assault), then relaxed as his curate merely stretched himself.

“In spite of what you say, Father,” he went on, emboldened again, “I think I might have a word with the boy.”

“Oh, do, Father, do! It’s probably more than he’ll have with either of us.”

And picking up his hat, Father Conroy went sauntering off to his own house. Of course, it wasn’t fair the way he was always baiting Fitzmaurice. And yet, he would start off every interview determined to be nice to the old man. Fighting with your parish priest, as he told his fellow curates, is like peeing against the wind; most of it comes back on yourself.

Fitzmaurice, in his way, was a kindhearted old fellow; he went to great trouble to build up the right mood in which to put the question. For days he took the boy with him on a course across the soggier reaches of devotional literature, from the C.T.S. pamphlets to the potted lives of the saints, with particular emphasis on his favorites, the boy-martyr Tarcisius and Saint Philomena (who was desanctified later, Father Conroy couldn’t help remembering with relish). Only then, after much talk of prison bars and roses from heaven, with some obscure reference to the Sacred Heart, did he feel he had worked up to the emotional heights of his question.

Father Conroy was summoned for the occasion. The boy was in the sitting room, having as a pretext been given the job of cleaning the silver on the sideboard. His answer was flat and decisive, as Father Conroy knew it would be.

“Ah well,” said Father Fitzmaurice, sinking back exhausted into his armchair. “You know best, I suppose. But, please God, you’ll soon be shown what’s in store for you.” And he did not see, as Father Conroy did, the boy glance down at the entrée dish in his hand and smile.