Ah, God help us, Roper and his unified universe. Father Byrne was now attacked by hiccups. He looked down sternly at Roper as though Roper, and not J. J., had brought them on. And then he looked up and round at us all. 'On your knees, all of you, hie,' he called. 'All of you, hie, pray. A spirit of evil stalks, hie, pardon, this dormitory.' So everybody got out of bed, all except one small boy who was asleep. 'Wake him, hie,' cried Father Byrne. 'Who is that boy there with no, hic, pyjama trousers? I can guess what you've been doing, boy. Hie'

'If somebody were to thump you on the back, ' said Roper kindly. 'Or nine sips of water, sir.'

'Almighty God,' began Father Byrne, 'Who knowest the secret thoughts of, hie, these boys' hearts-' And then he became aware of a certain element of unwilled irreverence, the hiccups breaking in like that. 'Pray on your own,' he cried. 'Get on with it.' And he hiccuped his way out. This was looked on as a sort of victory over authority for Roper.

He was having too many victories over authority, solely because of the exceptional gift of scientific enquiry he'd been demonstrating. I remember one fifth-form chemistry lesson in which Father Beauchamp, an English convert, had been dully revising the combining of elements into compounds. Roper suddenly asked: 'But why should sodium and chlorine want to combine to produce salt?'

The class laughed with pleasure at hope of a diversion. Father Beauchamp grinned sourly, saying, 'There can't be any question of wanting, Roper. Only animate things want.'

'I don't see that,' said Roper. 'Inanimate things must have wanted to become animate, otherwise life wouldn't have started on the earth. There must be a kind of free will in atoms.'

'Must there, Roper?' said Father Beauchamp. 'Aren't you rather tending to leave God out of the picture?'

'Oh, sir,' cried Roper impatiently, 'we ought not to bring God into a chemistry lesson.' Father Beauchamp chewed that for two seconds, then swallowed it. Tamely he said: 'You asked the question. See if you can answer it.'