n when all were vested he had stood holding out the boat to the
rector and the rector had put a spoonful of incense in it and it had
hissed on the red coals.

The fellows were talking together in little groups here and there on
the playground. The fellows seemed to him to have grown smaller: that
was because a sprinter had knocked him down the day before, a fellow
out of second of grammar. He had been thrown by the fellow's machine
lightly on the cinder path and his spectacles had been broken in three
pieces and some of the grit of the cinders had gone into his mouth.

That was why the fellows seemed to him smaller and farther away and the
goalposts so thin and far and the soft grey sky so high up. But there
was no play on the football grounds for cricket was coming: and some
said that Barnes would be prof and some said it would be Flowers. And
all over the playgrounds they were playing rounders and bowling
twisters and lobs. And from here and from there came the sounds of the
cricket bats through the soft grey air. They said: pick, pack, pock,
puck: little drops of water in a fountain slowly falling in the
brimming bowl.

Athy, who had been silent, said quietly:

--You are all wrong.

All turned towards him eagerly.

--Why?

--Do you know?

--Who told you?

--Tell us, Athy.

Athy pointed across the playground to where Simon Moonan was walking by
himself kicking a stone before him.

--Ask him, he said.

The fellows looked there and then said:

--Why him?

--Is he in it?

Athy lowered his voice and said:

--Do you know why those fellows scut? I will tell you but you must not
let on you know.

--Tell us, Athy. Go on. You might if you know.

He paused for a moment and then said mysteriously:

--They were caught with Simon Moonan and Tusker Boyle in the square one
night.

The fellows looked at him and asked:

--Caught?

--What doing?

Athy said:

--Smugging.

All the fellows were silent: and Athy said:

--And that's why.

Stephen looked at the faces of the fellows but they were all looking
across the playground. He wanted to ask somebody about it. What did
that mean about the smugging in the square? Why did the five fellows
out of the higher line run away for that? It was a joke, he thought.
Simon Moonan had nice clothes and one night he had shown him a ball of
creamy sweets that the fellows of the football fifteen had rolled down
to him along the carpet in the middle of the refector