There was silence. Even the indefatigable Peter could see that the subject had been thoroughly dismissed. He said no more until Father Conroy rose to go. “Your uncle James passed us on the road.”

“Too bad he missed me.”

“Oh, he’ll be here again next week. There’s a meeting called of the party committee. We told him we wanted him here.”

“He’s not used to that kind of invitation.”

“We’re sick and tired of him, Father, and that’s the truth. We’re going to put him on the spot over the contract for the roads.”

“Here?”

“Here, in this very room.”

Father Conroy looked around the little room, with the turf fire in the grate, the red mantelpiece crowded with photographs and china dogs. Was this to be James’s Waterloo? It seemed an unlikely place for the old warrior’s career to end, in the comfortable glow of the Sacred Heart lamp.

Peter was looking at him, waiting for him to say something, a word of support. There was only one thing to say, give him the boot! Too long have you put up with him! And yet, thinking of that desperate knocking at his own front door, the words stuck in his throat.

“Father!” the woman called, gesturing into the bedroom. He hurried to the doorway. The old man was sleeping, his breast rising and falling gently, his face at ease.

“Put out that candle,” he told her. “He’ll be needing it again.”

“God bless you, Father, I know he will.”

Up the road homeward, he leaned tiredly toward thoughts of bed, the bliss of sleep. It seemed a long time before he reached the gate. He turned into the deeper darkness of the drive with what seemed a slow, wheeling, laborious movement. Suddenly light exploded in his face; it filled him, stretched him upward and outward, so that his first thought was a panicky, Christ, I’m dead! Then a car door slammed somewhere ahead.

“Ah, Father!” James’s outline approached. “Isn’t this a piece of luck? I thought I’d drop in and I passing. And here you are.”

Blast you, I might have known you’d stay on, sit it out. And the shock you gave me! My legs are like water. However, he kept his voice steady and said, “I hope I didn’t keep you waiting?”

“Not at all, Father; you couldn’t have timed it better.”

“Well!” he said. Well, what? What were they to talk about? James was waiting to be invited in. Well, make him work for the invitation! “I don’t often have this pleasure, James.”

“To tell you the truth, I only dropped in to give you a message from Mikie. He wants the pony.”

“What pony?”

“Ah, now, Father, sure you discussed it with him. You wanted a trade-in, plus a little cash in hand.”

“From you, is it?” Of course, it was! Another bribe for the beloved Jimmy. “Well, he must have taken me up wrong.”

“I see. So there’s no deal!”

“No, James, no deal.” Not with you.