This, he thought, must be what all parents feel: ordinary men go through life like this crossing their fingers, praying against pain, afraid. … This is what we escape at no cost at all, sacrificing an unimportant motion of the body. For years, of course, he had been responsible for souls, but that was different … a lighter thing. You could trust God to make allowances, but you couldn’t trust smallpox, starvation, men
