A little lower down in the social scale, in the class I come from, the boys are made priests.

A doctor is a more expensive article to manufacture, so Maguire's father selected that line of life for him.

Not that they could have made a priest of you, Maguire, in any case.

You'd have disgraced Maynooth, as I did.' 'I don't understand,' said Hyacinth.

'I thought a vocation for the life was necessary.' 'Oh, so it is,' said Tim Halloran, 'but, you see, there's the period of the novitiate.