of life and dragging it away as he smiled, showing all his teeth just like Deadwood Dick in the newspaper cartoons. Father Gilhooley told how cunning Satan took the Master up to the mountain tops of the world and offered him all the pleasures and riches of this life, if He deny His Father, and Jesus resisted, saying, Get thee behind me, Satan, for He must be about His Father’s work. The priest said that Satan must have, symbolically, taken the German Kaiser to the mountain tops and offered him the world and Kaiser Bill must have accepted, and that was probably why we had the terrible war devastating Europe. Yes, they must beware of old Nick, and they must persevere in the ways of the Master, who died that agonizing death on that terrible cross to redeem mankind. They must always remember that Christ died for them, and they must never put a thorn in His side by sinning. And they must not forget the advice and example, the teachings of the good sisters. They must say their prayers morning and evening and whenever they were heavily beset with temptations, they must keep the commandments of God and of Holy Mother Church, receive the sacraments regularly, never willfully miss mass, avoid bad companions and all occasions of sin, publicly defend the Church from all enemies and contribute to the support of their pastor. If they did these things, and if they dedicated their lives to God’s Holy Mother, and to the good and great patron saint of their parish who had driven the snakes out of Ireland, converting it to the true faith so that it had become the Isle of Saints and Scholars, they would all be among the sheep and not the goats on that grand and final day of judgment, when the God of Love would become the God of Justice. Wishing that they would all go forth to lead holy and happy lives, he gave them one final word of warning. On this very night of their graduation, when they and their parents were so proud, so happy, so righteously gratified, there was many a work-worn father and many a gray-haired mother sitting by the lamplit parlor window, waiting and praying for the return of that prodigal son, that erring daughter, who would, alas . . . never return. He prayed Gawd forbid any graduates of St. Patrick’s to cause gray hairs to a father or a mother. Gawd wished that the fourth, above almost all other commandments, be kept . . . Honor thy father and thy mother; that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy Gawd giveth thee.
He blessed them, and the ceremonies were closed.
VII
The graduating class shuffled off the stage into the side room on the left. The boys gathered around wrinkled Sister Bertha; the girls giggled about smiling, youngish Sister Bernadette Marie.
Studs stood off by himself, wanting to join the guys and say goodbye to Battleaxe Bertha. He found himself suddenly sad because he wanted to stay in the eighth grade another year and have more fun. He told himself that Bertha was a pretty good sport, all things considered; and anyway, she hadn’t treated him so rotten like she had TB McCarthy, or Reardon, whose old man was only a working man and couldn’t afford to pay any tuition. Yes, she was a good sport at that. He wanted to go up to her and say goodbye, and say that he felt her to be a pretty good sport at that, but he couldn’t, because there was some goofy part of himself telling himself that he couldn’t. He couldn’t let himself get soft about anything, because, well, just because he wasn’t the kind of a bird that got soft. He never let anyone know how he felt. He told himself that anyway he’d join the guys and say goodbye to her. He made several starts to approach the guys, but didn’t go up. He stood watching, hoping that someone would recognize him and call him up. But he felt that he didn’t belong there. There was Frances, near Bernadette, and there was Lucy Scanlan; but they didn’t see him. His old not-belonging feeling had gotten hold of him. He eased out of the door. It was just as well, because he wanted to slip around to the can and have a smoke before he joined the folks out in front