The Professors House
tonation. Was the Father by any chance a Frenchman?”
“Yes, sir. He was a missionary priest, from Belgium.”
“Did you learn any French from him?”
“No, sir. He wanted to practise his Spanish.”
“You speak Spanish?”
“Not very well, Mexican Spanish.”
The Professor tried him out in Spanish and told him he thought he knew enough to get credit for a modern language. “And what are your deficiencies ?”
“I’ve never had any mathematics or science, and I write a very bad hand.”
“That’s not unusual,” St. Peter told him. “But, by the way, how did you happen to come to me instead of to the registrar?”
“I just got in this morning, and your name was the only one here I knew. I read an article by you in a magazine, about Fray Marcos. Father Duchene said it was the only thing with any truth in it he’d read about our country down there.”
The Professor had noticed before that whenever he wrote for popular periodicals it got him into trouble. “Well, what are your plans, young man? And, by the way, what is your name?”
“Tom Outland,”
The Professor repeated it. It seemed to suit the boy exactly.
—114—
