“A holiday?” echoed Michael fretfully. “What’s the good of a holiday with my mater at some beastly seaside place?”
“Oh, come,” said the priest, smiling. “You’ll be able to probe the orthodoxy of the neighbouring clergy.”
“Oh, no really, it’s nothing to laugh at, Mr. Viner. You’ve no idea how beastly it is to dawdle about in a crowd of people, and then at the end go back to another term of school. I’m sick of everything. Will you lend me Lee’s Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Terms?” added Michael in a voice that contained no accent of hope.
“I’ll lend you anything you like, my dear boy,” said the priest, “on one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“Why, that you’ll admit life holds a few grains of consolation.”
“But it doesn’t,” Michael declared.
“Wait a bit, I haven’t finished. I was going to say—when I tell you that we are going to keep the Assumption this August.”
Michael’s eyes glittered for a moment with triumph.
“By Jove, how decent.” Then they grew dull again. “And I shan’t be here. The rotten thing is, too, that my mater wants to go abroad. Only she says she couldn’t leave me alone. But of course she could really.”