xpressed regret for what he had said about the scapular. "I
had no call to say it was a damned rag," he said, "though that's all it
was. It meant a lot to her, of course, an' I suppose she was right to
try an' make a Catholic of you. But I'd hate to have a son of mine a
Catholic, Henry. It's an unmanly religion, only fit for women an' ...
an' actors! It's not religion at all ... it's funk, Henry, that's what
it is! I read 'The Garden of the Soul' one time, an' I'd be ashamed to
pray the way that book goes on, with their 'Jesus, Mercy!' 'Mother of
God, pity me!' 'Holy Saints, intercede for me!' Catholics don't pray,
Henry; they whine; and I've no use for whinin'. If I can't go to heaven
like a man, I'll go to hell like one. Anyway, if I commit a sin, I'll
not whine about it, an' if God says to me on the last day, 'Did you
commit this sin or that sin?' I'll answer Him to His face an' say, 'Yes,
God, I did, an' if You'd been a man, You'd have done the same
Yourself!'"

So it was that, in his childhood, no woman made a lasting impression on
Henry's affectionate nature. No one, indeed, filled his affections
except his father. Henry's love for his father was unfathomable. Their
natures were so dissimilar that they never clashed. There were things
about Henry, his nervousness, his sudden accessions of fright, which
puzzled Mr. Quinn, and might, had he been a smaller man than he was,
have made him angry with the boy, contemptuous of him; but when Mr.
Quinn came across some part of Henry's nature which was incomprehensible
to him, he tried first, to understand and then, failing that, to be
tolerant. "We all have our natures," he used to say to himself, "an'
it's no use complainin' because people are different. Sure, that's what
makes them interestin' anyway!"

2

But Henry's affection for Gilbert Farlow and Ninian Graham and Roger
Carey was a new affection, a thing that came spontaneously to him. There
were other boys at Rumpell's whom he liked and others for whom he felt
neither like nor dislike, but just the ordinary tolerance of temporary
encounters and passing life; and there were a few for whom he felt a
hatred so venomous that it sometimes frightened him. There was Cobain, a
brutal, thick-jawed fellow who thumped small boys whenever they came
near him, and there was Mullally!... He could not describe his feeling
for Mullally! It was so strong that he could not sit still in the same
room with him, could not speak civil