The only thing that young James Peters wanted him to join was a Rugby football club. Teach the men and boys of the parish to play Rugger like sportsmen and not like cads, and you’ve taught them most of what a boy or man need learn, James Peters held. While the senior curate said, give them the ritual of the Catholic Church, and the second curate said, give them a minimum wage, and the vicar said, put into them, by some means or another, the fear of God, the junior curate led them to the playing-field hired at great expense, and tried to make sportsmen of them; and grew at times, but very seldom, passionate like a thwarted child, because it was the most difficult thing he had ever tried to do, and because they would lose their tempers and kick one another on the shins, and walk off the field, and send in their resignations, together with an intimation that St. Gregory’s Church would see them no more, because the referee was a liar and didn’t come it fair. Then James Peters would throw back their resignations and their intimations in their faces, and call them silly asses and generally manage to smooth things down in his cheerful, youthful, vigorous way. Eddy Oliver helped him in this. He and Peters were great friends, though more unlike even than most people are. Peters had a very single eye, and herded people very easily and completely into sheep and goats; his particular nomenclature for them was “sportsmen” and “rotters.” He took the Catholic Church, so to speak, in his swing, and was one of her most loyal and energetic sons.