Alas, the tea at breakfast seemed almost worse than he had drunk the night before; but his neighbour, a red-haired boy from Kerry, insisted that it could not be worse. 'For sure,' said he, 'it's the same mucky old tea over again, the same as you had last night, only maybe with more jollop in it.'

Adam wondered what 'jollop' was, but his instinct told him that it would be indelicate to inquire. 'It makes me sick, the taste of it,' said he.

The other boy leered at him mockingly. 'You've a mighty fine stomach,' said he, 'for I never heard of jollop making anyone sick yet. . . . Sure isn't it there to keep you from being sick?'

'Is it?' said Adam politely. 'I didn't know.'

His neighbour called down the table, 'Say, you fellows, here's a beggar didn't know what jollop was for.'

Some boys seemed amused by this and others not. Adam felt that he preferred the boys who did not. He looked about the room wishing he could catch sight of the boy who had driven up from the station with him the night before, but he was not visible . . he tried to discover from his neighbours who he was, but not being able to give him a name or describe him in terms which called up any image to their inattentive minds, he got no help from them. At his own table, but not near him, sat the boy who had assailed him in the train; Adam had seen him also about the passages and was under the impression that he occupied one of the cubicles in his dormitory, but he vouchsafed no more than a surly half-nod of recognition; on the other hand, Adam saw from the glances of his neighbours that his tongue had not been silent on the subject of their meeting. Whatever he may have said on that subject no one since then had offered to bully him . . . the worst thing that had happened at Clongowes so far was the tea; but there was no gainsaying that was a very evil thing indeed. After breakfast

Adam's impressions began to blur again; there was a good deal of indeterminate hurrying about up corridors and down corridors, into class-rooms and out of classrooms, into the great study over the refectory and out of it again, and down to the box-room to unpack things and so on; and a great deal of ringing of the big bell at the angle of the two great corridors and an hour or so in the playground which bored him stiff, for he was quite without the art of playing with other boys and without the desire to acquire it. What he would have liked to do was to take out his bicycle on the cinder-path, he had never ridden a bicycle on a cinder-path yet, but he felt that etiquette if nothing else forbade a new boy to do this at once.

As a set-off against this, Mr Beam, finding him standing alone near the cricket-patch on the Third Line playing-ground, gave him a few kind words in the intervals of keeping the peace among his brawnier charges, and as he walked back alone from the playground a kindly hand was laid on his shoulder from behind and he found himself looking up in the face of Father Bernard James.

'Adam, my dear boy,' said he, 'tell me, are you happy at Clongowes?'

'Yes, sir,' said Adam mechanically, adding with caution: 'I mean, sir, I hope to be.'

Father James smiled genially. 'That is right,' said he, 'if you hope to be happy you will be happy always provided that you hope in the right spirit... and I know you have the right spirit.' 'How do you know, sir?' Adam asked.

Father James laughed outright, though very softly and as it were roundly, 'God bless you my dear boy, we know all about you here,' and then gravely, making the sign of the cross upon his forehead, he added, 'Keep the faith, Adam Macfadden.'

Chapter Thirteen

FATHER CLARE'S SURPRISING OBSERVATION

YES, Adam's hope that he should be happy at Clongowes seemed quite likely of fulfilment. To begin with, everyone he met, at all events among those in authority, spoke to him as if their intentions towards him were at least kindly; and Adam, even more than other boys, was susceptible to the veriest implication of kindliness. He was willing to believe that he was being treated well even when he was not. At Clongowes none apparently sought to treat him ill: Mr Beam, the Third Line Prefect, was notably kind, being, indeed, kind to all but a few obviously provocative boys. Adam thought to some he was foolishly kind; for many who showed the Prefect a servile face mocked at him and his slightly finicking way behind his back. Father Bernard James, too, in an older and more sophisticated manner, the fine shades of which Adam was yet too young to analyse, showed him a winning amiability.

Less attractive in person, but perhaps most appreciative of all, was Father Clare, the master of the class in which Adam was placed, confessedly as an experiment : he was young for Father Clare's Class, but Father Clare seemed anxious to keep him in it if he himself did not shirk the work. A short man and stout was Father Clare he looked to Adam to bear a refined and spiritualised resemblance to Lady Bland's butler.. even he who had introduced him to the dread luxury of a bath in her ladyship's house in Fitzwilliam Square, in those distant days when he was still a little

ragamuffin, dreading soap and its smell rather worse than. the brimstone which his father had prophesied would make an end of Mr O'Toole. . . . Adam was a little shocked to know that this bright and engaging little priest was known to his pupils, simply by reason of his hooked nose and rounded tummy, as 'The Toucan.' . . . True, Adam did not know what a toucan was, but he judged from a drawing that appeared one day on the blackboard ere Father Clare entered the classroom that it was some absurd kind of bird . . reference to the natural history book in the Third Line library confirmed this impression. So much so that Adam regretted consulting it; for the picture of the toucan there so closely resembled Father Clare in certain aspects at his less dignified moments that Adam himself, grateful as he was to him, and conscious of his essential goodness underlying his grotesqueness, dared not always look him in the face. Making

his first confession to Father Bernard James, Adam expressed his contrition for his inability to refrain from laughing at Father Clare; but even saintly Father James did not appear to think that it greatly mattered whether one laughed at Father Clare or not.

Father Clare himself was quite unconscious of any lack of respect on Adam's part, and showed as real a desire to help him in his work and to further his education within his own limitations as had Father Strong or anyone else at Belvedere. Adam found himself once again really interested in Latin and eager to avail himself of his new master's good offices in introducing him to Greek. . . . English came to him so naturally that he could keep his place in the class at that without consciously studying it. . . the question now arose should he study Gaelic? . . . Happy thought! He would ask Father Clare, and accept his decision.

'Gaelic,' said Father Clare, 'Gaelic! You are good enough to ask me whether I think you ought to devote

your attention to the study of Gaelic. Well, well, Gaelic-Ha! hum! the question is whether I should advise you to study Gaelic or not. . . . Am I right in saying that that is the case?'

Adam answered very respectfully: 'Yes, sir, it is,' though he was suffering inwardly from a desire to grimace or worse over Father Clare's immediate and pressing effort, as it were, to realise the picture of the toucan in the natural history book, a resemblance that was made all the more absurd because Father Clare happened to be wearing his biretta, a head-dress which threw up into preposterous relief the more toucanesque of his features. The conversation took place, not in the class-room, but in the corridor between the school house and the old building, where they had happened to meet outside the minister's door; between that and the door by the refectory, up and down the passage, his master marched him while they discussed the subject; and Adam could not help noticing that, keeping step with the plump priest, his young feet rebelliously outpaced the man's: even in the matter of his legs poor Father Clare resembled a toucan.

But the mentality behind the ludicrous mouth was not the dullest Adam encountered on his way through the world. Father Clare was an educationalist not merely by accident but by temperament: he loved to learn, and even to impart learning, despite the dire physical handicap under which he laboured, to all he could persuade to listen to him. For Adam's hearing and heeding little brain he had conceived an almost passionate affection. While he walked apparently so foolishly up and down, repeating in his chattering tone, 'Gaelic is that the question?' in his heart he was praying that he might advise this young mind, that had honoured him by seeking his advice, with a wisdom that was worthy of his confidence. His instinctive prejudice, strengthened in him by his own