Ireland -- Emigration and Immigration -- Fiction; Ireland -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
"No, nothing is left. Don't look at me that way. I tell you nothing is
left. It is a lump of clay, and I cannot do it again. I feel as if I
never could do a piece of sculpture again, as if I never wanted to. But
what are you thinking of? You said just now that you could not sit to
me again. Tell me, Lucy, and tell me quickly. I can see you know
something about this. You suspect someone."
"No, I suspect no one. It is very strange."
"You were going to tell me something when you came in. You said you
could not sit to me again. Why is that?"
"Because they have found out everything at home, that I sat for you,
for the Virgin."
"But they don't know that--"
"Yes, they do. They know everything. Father McCabe came in last night,
just after we had closed the shop. It was I who let him in, and mother
was sorry. She knew he had come to ask father for a subscription to his
church. But I had said that father and mother were at home, and when I
brought him upstairs and we got into the light, he stood looking at me.
He had not seen me for some years, and I thought at first it was
because he saw me grown up. He sat down, and began to talk to father
and mother about his church, and the altars he had ordered for it, and
the statues, and then he said that you were doing a statue for him, and
mother said that she knew you very well, and that you sometimes came to
spend an evening with us, and that I sat to you. It was then that I saw
him give a start. Unfortunately, I was sitting under a lamp reading a
book, and the light was full upon my face, and he had a good view of
it. I could see that he recognised me at once. You must have shown him
the statue. It was yesterday you changed the head."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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