you, Henry," Mr. Quinn said to
his son on the evening before Marsh arrived, "an' a lot more nor you'll
learn at Rumpell's, or, for that matter, at Trinity."

"Then why do you want me to go to Trinity?" Henry asked, still unable to
conceal his disappointment at not being sent to Cambridge with his
friends.

"I've told you that already," Mr. Quinn replied firmly, closing his lips
down tightly. "I want you to have Irish friends as well as English
friends, and I've learned this much from livin', that a man seldom makes
friends ... _friends,_ mind you ... after he's twenty-five. You only
make acquaintances after that age. I'd like well to think there were
people in Ireland that had as tight a hold on your friendship, Henry, as
Gilbert Farlow and them other lads have.... An' there's another thing,"
he went on, leaning forward as he spoke and wagging his forefinger at
Henry. "If you go to Trinity with a kindly feelin' for Ireland, it'll be
something to think there's one man in the place that has a decent
thought for his country an' isn't an imitation Englishman. Who knows
what good you might do there?" He let his speculations consume him. "You
might change the character of the whole college. You ... you might make
it Irish. You ... you might be the means of turnin' the Provost into an
Irishman an' start him takin' an interest in his country. The oul' lad
might turn Fenian an' get transported or hung!..."

When he had ceased to speculate on what might happen if Henry began an
Irish crusade in Trinity, he spoke again of Marsh.

"You'll like him," he said. "I know you will. He's a bit off his head,
of course, but that's neither here nor there. The man's a scholar an' I
think he writes bits of poetry. I've never seen any of his pieces, but
somebody told me he wrote things. I'd like well to have a poet in the
house!"

"Is he a Catholic?" Henry asked.

His father nodded his head. "An' very religious, too, I believe," he
said. "Still, that's neither here nor there. I met him up in Dublin.
Ernest Harper told me about him!"

Ernest Harper was the painter-poet who had influenced so many young men
in Ireland, and Mr. Quinn had come into the circle of his friends
through the Irish co-operative movement. He had made a special visit to
Dublin to consult Harper about the education of his son, telling him of
his desire that Henry should have a strong national sense ... "but none
of your damned theosophy, mind!..." and Harper had recom