He felt like hearing Mrs. Grogan’s prayer again, and so he went to the girls’ division a little early for his usual delivery of Jane Eyre. He eavesdr… - John Irving

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He felt like hearing Mrs. Grogan’s prayer again, and so he went to the girls’ division a little early for his usual delivery of Jane Eyre. He eavesdropped in the hall on Mrs. Grogan’s prayer; I must ask her if she’d mind saying it to the boys, he thought, then wondered if it would confuse the boys coming so quickly on the heels of, or just before, the Princes of Maine, Kings of New England benediction. I get confused myself sometimes, Dr. Larch knew.

‘Grant us a safe lodging, and a holy rest,’ Mrs. Grogan was saying, ‘and peace at the last.’

Amen, thought Wilbur Larch, the saint of St. Cloud’s, who was seventy-something, and an ether addict, and who felt that he’d come a long way and still had a long way to go.