His illusions regarding his Latin were broken. He had laid his manuscript on a table by his bedside, and on awakening he had reached out his hand for it, but he had not read a page when he dropped it; and the manuscript lay on the floor while he dressed. He went into his breakfast, and when he had eaten his breakfast his nerve failed him. He could not bring himself to fetch the manuscript, and it was his housekeeper who brought it to him.
"Ah," he said, "it is tasteless as the gruel that poor James Murdoch is eating." And taking a volume from the table—"St. Augustine's Confessions"—he said, "what diet there is here!"
He stood reading. There was no idiom, he had used Latin words instead of English. At last he was interrupted by the wheels of a car stopping at his door. Father Meehan! Meehan could revise his Latin! None had written such good Latin at Maynooth as Meehan.
"My dear Meehan, this is indeed a pleasant surprise."
"I thought I'd like to see you. I drove over. But—I am not disturbing you.... You've taken to reading again. St. Augustine! And you're writing in Latin!"
Father James's face grew red, and he took the manuscript out of his friend's hand.
"No, you mustn't look at that."
And then the temptation to ask him to overlook certain passages made him change his mind.
"I was never much of a Latin scholar."
"And you want me to overlook your Latin for you. But why are you writing Latin?"