“Nat millan O ste dolman bote ta Shrewsbury fernas ta poo litanos,” said Emily glibly. “That means, ‘Next summer I am going to Shrewsbury woods to pick strawberries.’ I yelled that across the playground to Ilse the other day at recess and oh, how everybody stared.”
“Staring, is it? I should say so. My own poor old eyes are all but dropping out av me head. Let’s hear a bit more av it.”
“Mo tral li dead seb ad li mo trene. Mo bertral seb mo bertrene das sten dead e ting setra. That means ‘My father is dead and so is my mother. My grandfather and grandmother have been dead a long time.’ We haven’t invented a word for ‘dead’ yet. I think I will soon be able to write my poems in our language and then Aunt Elizabeth will not be able to read them if she finds them.”
“Have you written any other poetry besides your epic?”
“Oh, yes—but just short pieces—dozens of them.”
“H’m. Would you be so kind as to let me hear one av them?”
Emily was greatly flattered. And she did not mind letting Father Cassidy hear her precious stuff.
“I’ll recite my last poem,” she said, clearing her throat importantly. “It’s called Evening Dreams.”
Father Cassidy listened attentively. After the first verse a change came over his big brown face, and he began patting his fingertips together. When Emily finished she hung down her lashes and waited tremblingly. What if Father Cassidy said it was no good? No, he wouldn’t be so impolite—but if he bantered her as he had done about her epic—she would know what that meant.
Father Cassidy did not speak all at once. The prolonged suspense was terrible to Emily. She was afraid he could not praise and did not want to hurt her feelings by dispraise. All at once her “Evening Dreams” seemed trash and she wondered how she could ever have been silly enough to repeat it to Father Cassidy.