He had been tutor to both the sons for a while, to Ralph only for a few months, but to Chris since his twelfth birthday, and the latter had formed with him a kind of peaceful confederacy, often looking in on him at unusual hours, always finding him genial, although very rarely confidential.

It was to Mr.Carleton, too, that Chris owed his first drawings to the mystical life of prayer; there was a shelf of little books in the corner by the window of the priest's room, from which he would read to the boy aloud, first translating them into English as he went, and then, as studies progressed, reading the Latin as it stood; and that mysteriously fascinating world in which great souls saw and heard eternal things and talked familiarly with the Saviour and His Blessed Mother had first dawned on the boy there.

New little books, too, appeared from time to time, and the volumes had overflowed their original home; and from that fact Christopher gathered that the priest, though he had left the external life of Religion, still followed after the elusive spirit that was its soul.
"But tell me," he said again, as the priest laid the pen down and sat back in his chair, crossing his buckled feet beneath the cassock; "tell me, why is it so hard?
I am not afraid of the discipline or the food." "It is the silence," said the priest, looking at him.
"I love silence," said Chris eagerly.
"Yes, you love an hour or two, or there would be no hope of a vocation for you.

But I do not think you will love a year.

However, I may be wrong.