d now he used the
word as a matter of habit. "What do you want to go to an English college
for?" he demanded. "You might as well want to go to that Presbyterian
hole in Belfast!"

"I want to go to Cambridge," Henry replied a little angrily and
therefore a little precisely, "because all my friends are going there.
They're going up next year, and I want to go with them. They're my best
friends!..."

"Make friends in Ireland, then!" Mr. Quinn interrupted. "You don't make
friends with Englishmen ... you make money out of them. That's all
they're fit for!"

He began to laugh when he said that, but Henry still scowled. "I hate to
hear you talking like that, father!" he said. "I know you don't mean
it...."

"Don't I, begod?..."

"No, you don't, but even in fun, I hate to hear you saying it. I like
English people. I'm very fond of Gilbert Farlow!..."

"A nice fellow!" Mr. Quinn murmured, remembering how he had liked
Gilbert when he had visited Rumpell's once to see Henry.

"And Ninian Graham and Roger Carey, I like them, too, and so do you. You
liked them, didn't you?"

"Very nice fellows, both of them, very nice ... for all they're
English!"

Henry wanted to go on ... to talk of Mrs. Graham and of Mary ... but
shyness held his tongue for him.

"It's a habit I've got into," Mr. Quinn said, talking of his
denunciation of the English, "but don't mind me, Henry. Sure, I'm like
all the Ulstermen: my tongue's more bitter nor my behaviour. All the
same, my son, you're goin' to T.C.D., an' that's an end of it. T.C.D.'ll
make a man of you, but Oxford 'ud only make a snivellin' High Church
curate of you ... crawlin' on your belly to an imitation altar an'
lettin' on to be a Catholic!..."

"But I don't want to go to Oxford, father. I want to go to Cambridge!"

"It's all the same, Henry. Oxford'll make a snivellin' parson out of
you, an' Cambridge'll turn you into a snivellin' atheist. I know them
places well, Henry. I'm acquainted with people from both of them. All
the Belfast mill-owners send their sons there, so's they can be made
into imitation Englishmen. An' I tell you there's no differs between
Cambridge an' Oxford. You crawl on your belly to the reredos at Oxford,
an' you crawl on your belly to Darwin an' John Stuart Mill at Cambridge.
They can't do without a priest of some sort at them places, an' I'm a
Protestant, Henry, an' I want no priest at all. Now, at Trinity you'll
crawl on your belly to no one but your G