for a humble praste like meself. Have another slice av cake and tell me all about it.”
“It’s like this—I’m writing an epic.”
Father Cassidy suddenly leaned over and gave Emily’s wrist a little pinch.
“I just wanted to see if you were real,” he explained. “Yes—yes, you’re writing an epic—go on. I think I’ve got my second wind now.”
“I began it last spring. I called it The White Lady first but now I’ve changed it to The Child of the Sea. Don’t you think that’s a better title?”
“Much better.”
“I’ve got three cantos done, and I can’t get any further because there’s something I don’t know and can’t find out. I’ve been so worried about it.”
“What is it?”
“My epic,” said Emily, diligently devouring plum cake, “is about a very beautiful high-born girl who was stolen away from her real parents when she was a baby and brought up in a woodcutter’s hut.”
“One av of the seven original plots in the world,” murmured Father Cassidy.
“What?”
“Nothing. Just a bad habit av thinking aloud. Go on.”
“She had a lover of high degree but his family did not want him to marry her because she was only a woodcutter’s daughter—”
“Another of the seven plots—excuse me.”
“—so they sent him away to the Holy land on a crusade and word came back that he was killed and then Editha—her name was Editha—went into a convent—”
Emily paused for a bite of plum cake and Father Cassidy took up the strain.
“And now her lover comes back very much alive, though covered with Paynim scars, and the secret av her
