"What's the matter, dear?" he asked, bending over until her face was level with his own. The smell of vomit rose from her like a miasma, but he crushed his impulse to turn away.

  "Oh, Fruh-Fruh-Frank!" she wailed, her face twisting up and her tears undammed at last. She threw her arms around his neck and clung to him passionately, weeping in the curiously silent, painful way all the Cleary children did once they were out of infancy. It was horrible to watch, and not something soft words or kisses could heal.

  When she was calm again he picked her up and carried her to a pile of sweet-smelling hay near Mr. Robertson's mare; they sat there together and let the horse lip at the edges of their straw bed, lost to the world. Meggie's head was cradled on Frank's smooth bare chest, tendrils of her hair flying around as the horse blew gusty breaths into the hay, snorting with pleasure. 

  Frank had got used to her smell and didn't mind it any more; he reached out a hand and absently stroked the mare's nose, pushing it away when it got too inquisitive.

  "We're poor, Meggie, that's the main reason. The nuns always hate poor pupils. After you've been in Sister Ag's moldy old school a few days you'll see it's not only the Clearys she takes it out on, but the Marshalls and the MacDonalds as well. We're all poor.

  Now, if we were rich and rode to school in a big carriage like the O'Briens, they'd be all over us like a rash. But we can't donate organs to the church, or gold vestments to the sacristy, or a new horse and buggy to the nuns. So we don't matter. They can do what they like to us. "I remember one day Sister Ag was so mad at me that she kept screaming at me, "Cry, for the love of heaven! Make a noise, Francis Cleary! If you'd give me the satisfaction of hearing you bellow, I wouldn't hit you so hard or so often!"

  "That's another reason why she hates us; it's where we're better than the Marshalls and the MacDonalds. She can't make the Clearys cry. We're supposed to lick her boots.