“He’ll meet you at the station,” she went on. “He’s not a Catholic, but don’t mind that; he rather likes priests. These English, Father.” There was what sounded like a suppressed laugh, a whispered “Stop it!”; then into the phone she said briskly, “See you then, Father. You’ll be here about twelve.” And she rang off.

He stood outside the phone booth, looking toward his empty table. If he sat down again, he was lost; he must go on, not thinking about the possibility of failure. He had a couple of hours to fill in before the later train; he filled them in just walking about the streets, coming back occasionally to sit in the waiting room. On the train, he dozed his way out of London, then fell asleep at last. Wakening at Eastbourne, seizing his old portmanteau, which had come with him on his first missionary journey to England, he realized he had forgotten to shave.

Not that it mattered. What difference did it make how he looked, when his purpose was going to startle them so much? To reclaim one of the lost Conroys for Rosnagree! So outrageous did it seem, so reckless his hope, that he laughed as he stood on the platform of Eastbourne station. By God, he’d show them!

But he grew subdued after meeting Marie’s husband, who introduced himself simply as Bill. Sitting back in the lovingly looked after old Wolseley, he listened to Bill’s chat and watched glimpses of the flat, gray sea go past between the pastel-washed houses and the banks of orderly flowers. Bill was small, neat, a freshly laundered old man with the manner of a dapper schoolboy. His affability seemed calculated, and Father Conroy thought of it as a barrier, which he would have to break through. Yet what Bill was saying assumed that they were already intimate.

“Mahzie’s chest, you know” (his northern consonants were bathed in a throaty, confidential warmth, like Vap-O-Rub) “—we call her Mahzie (Mah-zie, you see) – her chest has never been very strong. So when I retired, we thought things over for a while, went into it very carefully, and at last decided to come south. No, she’s had no trouble since, touch wood. You know, Father, most of the time I tend to forget she’s Irish, but then, my goodness, she does something all of a sudden, like producing you, if I may say so, out of a hat.”

Father Conroy grimaced, looking straight ahead.

“To think, until a few hours ago, I had no idea she had a brother-in-law, a priest! That’s what’s so Irish about her.”

“I don’t think that’s particularly Irish.”