“Oh, come now, darling, don’t cry,” implored Father Cassidy. “Elves never cry—they can’t. It would break my heart to discover you weren’t av the Green Folk. You may call yourself av New Moon and av any religion you like, but the fact remains that you belong to the Golden Age and the old gods. That’s why I must save your precious bit av greenwood for you.”
Emily stared.
“I think it can be done,” Father Cassidy went on. “I think if I go to Lofty John and have a heart-to-heart talk with him I can make him see reason. Lofty John and I are very good friends. He’s a reasonable creature, if you know how to take him—which means to flatter his vanity judiciously. I’ll put it to him, not as priest to parishioner, but as man to man, that no decent Irishman carries on a feud with women and that no sensible person is going to destroy for nothing but a grudge those fine old trees that have taken half a century to grow and can never be replaced. Why, the man who cuts down such a tree except when it is really necessary should be hanged as high as Haman on a gallows made from the wood av it.”
(Emily thought she would write that last sentence of Father Cassidy’s down in Cousin Jimmy’s blank book when she got home.)
“But I won’t say that to Lofty John,” concluded Father Cassidy. “Yes, Emily av New Moon, I think we can consider it a settled thing that your bush will not be cut down.”
Suddenly Emily felt very happy. Somehow she had entire confidence in Father Cassidy. She was sure he would twist Lofty John around his little finger.
“Oh, I can never thank you enough!” she said earnestly.
“That’s true, so don’t waste breath trying. And now tell me things. Are there any more av you? And how long have you been yourself?”
“I’m twelve years old—I haven’t any brothers or sisters. And I think I’d better be going home.”
“Not till you’ve had a bite av lunch.”
“Oh, thank you, I’ve had my supper.”
“Two hours ago and a two-mile walk since. Don’t tell me. I’m sorry I haven’t any nectar and ambrosia on hand—such food as elves eat—and not even a saucer av moonshine—but my mother makes the best plum cake av any woman in P.E. Island. And we keep a cream cow. Wait here a bit. Don’t be afraid av the B’y. He eats tender little Protestants sometimes, but he never meddles with leprechauns.”
When Father Cassidy came back his mother came with him, carrying a tray. Emily had expected to see her big and brown too, but she was the tiniest woman imaginable, with snow-white, silky hair, mild blue eyes, and pink cheeks.
“Isn’t she the sweetest thing in the way av mothers?” asked Father Cassidy. “I keep her to look at. Av course—” Father Cassidy dropped his voice to a pig’s whisper—“there’s something odd about her. I’ve known that woman to stop right in the middle av housecleaning, and go off and spend an afternoon in the woods. Like yourself, I’m thinking she has some truck with fairies.”
Mrs. Cassidy smiled, kissed Emily, said she must go out and finish her preserving, and trotted off.
“Now you sit right down here, Elf, and be human for ten minutes and we’ll have a friendly snack.”
Emily was hungry—a nice comfortable feeling she hadn’t experienced for a fortnight. Mrs. Cassidy’s plum cake was all her reverend son claimed, and the cream cow seemed to be no myth.
“What do you think av me now?” asked Father Cassidy suddenly, finding Emily’s eyes fixed on him speculatively.
Emily blushed. She had been wondering if she dared ask another favour of Father Cassidy.
“I think you are awfully good,” she said.
“I am awfully good,” agreed Father Cassidy. “I’m so good that I’ll do what you want me to do—for I feel there’s something else you want me to do.”
“I’m in a scrape and I’ve been in it all summer. You see”—Emily was very sober—“I am a poetess.”
“Holy Mike! That is serious. I don’t know if I can do much for you. How long have you been that way?”
“Are you making fun of me?” asked Emily gravely.
Father Cassidy swallowed something besides plum cake.
“The saints forbid! It’s only that I’m rather overcome. To be after entertaining a lady av New Moon—and an elf—and a poetess all in one is a bit too much 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 highborn 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
