Free The Young Rebels by Morgan Llywelyn Page A

lovely city of lime-white palaces.’
    All at once I understand what ‘lyrical’ means.
    Willie has exhibited his sculpture at the Hibernian Academy and elsewhere and won numerous awards. Yet you would never know it to look at him. Like the Ardmháistir, he keeps everything inside.
    I ask Willie the question my father would ask: ‘Canone make a living as an artist?’
    ‘Art is living, John Joe. Trying to earn money with it is something else entirely. I only wish it did pay well, the school needs the money.’
    The school is everything to the Pearse brothers. That, and Ireland.
    When the Ardmháistir returns I ask him my question about war. He says, ‘War is a terrible thing but war is not an evil thing. It is the things that make war necessary that are evil. You’ve heard me speak of James Connolly? Mr Connolly has written that just wars should be fought in, and unjust wars should be fought against.’
    I shall be glad when the holidays are over and Roger comes back to school. I find myself worrying about his brothers as if they were my own. I have no brothers; I was going to have a little sister. But now I never will.
    If I were really an orphan I wonder if Roger’s parents would be willing to adopt me. I suppose I’d have to become a Protestant. Would that be so difficult? Mr Pearse is a devoted Catholic, but he says we all worship the same God anyway.
    On the day Roger returns to St Enda’s he and I have another fight, but it’s sort of a pretend one. I’m so glad to see him I give him a really hard punch on the armand he gets mad. So we flail away at each other for a while. Afterward we go into the kitchen together to ask Mrs Pearse for some bread and butter.
    ‘How did you get that bruise on your face, Roger?’ she wants to know.
    He glances at me. ‘I fell down.’
    ‘All on your own? You simply fell down?’
    ‘Well, we were running and … and this big dog ran out in front of us and …’
    ‘What big dog? Here on the grounds? Should I ask Michael MacRory to go out and find it?’
    ‘Unh, I threw a stone at it and it ran away,’ says Roger.
    She frowns. ‘You threw a stone at an animal? Roger, I’m ashamed of you!’
    ‘I mean we threw a stone at it. John Joe and me. John Joe more than me, actually.’
    There was no big dog. When Roger starts lying he doesn’t know how to stop, and he’s going to get us both in trouble. Me more than him, actually. If he would just tell the truth we could stop this before it gets any worse. But he’s not going to, he’s getting that sulky look he gets some times. And I can’t very well accuse my best friend of lying. Especially since he lied in the first place to keep from saying I hit him.
    So here we are in the Ardmháistir’s office again. Helooks at us, shakes his head, and gives a long sigh. ‘What is it this time, boys? My mother says you’ve been up to something but she’s not sure what. Surely you weren’t fighting again.’
    ‘We were not fighting, sir,’ I say quickly. He would be so disappointed, after the last time, if … now I’m lying too. How did this happen?
    There is only one thing for it. I take a very deep breath. This is terribly hard, I wish he would not look at me so trustingly.
    Maybe that’s why I have to do it.
    ‘We were fighting, sir. Just roughhousing, you know. But when I hit Roger under the eye it made a bruise, and of course Mrs Pearse noticed it, and …’
    ‘And I told a lie to keep John Joe from getting into trouble,’ Roger interrupts gallantly.
    ‘I see. And there was no dog?’
    ‘No dog, sir. And no stone thrown at one, either.’
    ‘Please sir,’ says Roger, sounding very nervous, ‘are we going to be punished?’
    ‘Do you think you should be?’
    Roger bites his lip.
    ‘And you, John Joe, do you think you should be punished ?’
    Perhaps sometimes telling the truth can go too far. But having begun I must continue. ‘I do think weshould be punished, sir. We both told lies.’
    The Ardmháistir’s