Peg O' My Heart Part 44

"Really?" asked the amused Jerry. Peg imitated the young man's well-bred, polished tone:

"Wah ye bawn theah?"

Jerry laughed immoderately. Who was this extraordinary little person?

was the one thought that was in his mind.

"How would you say it?" he asked.

"I'd say it naturally. I would say: 'Were ye borrn there?' I wouldn't twist the poor English language any worse than it already is."

Peg had enough of the discussion and started off on another expedition of discovery by standing on a chair and examining some china in a cabinet.

Jerry turned up to the windows and drew back the curtains, threw the windows wide open and looked up at the sky. It was once more a crystal blue and the sun was s.h.i.+ning vividly.

He called to Peg: "The storm is over. The air is clear of electricity.

All the anger has gone from the heavens. See?"

Peg said reverently: "Praise be to G.o.d for that."

Then she went haphazardly around the room examining everything, sitting in various kinds of chairs, on the sofa, smelling the flowers and wherever she went Jerry followed her, at a little distance.

"Are you going to stay here?" he reopened the conversation with.

"Mebbe I will and mebbe I won't," was Peg's somewhat unsatisfactory answer.

"Did your aunt send for you?"

"No--me uncle."

"Indeed?"

"Yes, indade; me Uncle Nat."

"NAT?"

"Nathaniel Kingsnorth--rest his soul."

"Nathaniel Kingsnorth!" cried Jerry in amazement

Peg nodded.

"Sleepin' in his grave, poor man."

"Why, then you're Miss Margaret O'Connell?"

"I am. How did ye know THAT?"

"I was with your uncle when he died."

"WERE ye?"

"He told me all about you."

"Did he? Well, I wish the poor man 'ud ha' lived. An' I wish he'd a'

thought o' us sooner. He with all his money an' me father with none, an' me his sister's only child."

"What does your father do?" Peg took a deep breath and answered eagerly. She was on the one subject about which she could talk freely--all she needed was a good listener. This strange man, unlike her aunt, seemed to be the very person to talk to on the one really vital subject to Peg. She said breathlessly:

"Sure me father can do anythin' at all--except make money. An' when he does MAKE it he can't kape it. He doesn't like it enough. Nayther do I.

We've never had very much to like, but we've seen others around us with plent an' faith we've been the happiest--that we have."

She only stopped to take breath before on she went again:

"There have been times when we've been most starvin', but me father never lost his pluck or his spirits. Nayther did I. When times have been the hardest I've never heard a word of complaint from me father, nor seen a frown on his face. An' he's never used a harsh word to me in me life. Sure we're more like boy and girl together than father and daughther." Her eyes began to fill and her voice to break.

"An' I'm sick for the sight of him. An' I'm sure he is for me--for his 'Peg o' my Heart,' as he always calls me."

She covered her eyes as the tears trickled down through her fingers.

Under her breath Jerry heard her saying:

"I wish I was back home--so I do."

He was all compa.s.sion in a moment. Something in the loneliness and staunchness of the little girl appealed to him.

"Don't do that," he said softly, as he felt the moisture start into his own eyes.

Peg unpinned her little handkerchief and carefully wiped away her tears and just as carefully folded the handkerchief up again and pinned it back by her side.

"I don't cry often," she said. "Me father never made me do it. I never saw HIM cry but twice in his life--once when he made a little money and we had a Ma.s.s said for me mother's soul, an' we had the most beautiful candles on Our Lady's altar. He cried then, he did. And when I left him to come here on the s.h.i.+p. And then only at the last minnit. He laughed and joked with me all the time we were together--but when the s.h.i.+p swung away from the dock he just broke down and cried like a little child. 'My Peg!' he kep' sayin'; 'My little Peg!' I tell ye I wanted to jump off that s.h.i.+p an' go back to him--but we'd started--an' I don't know how to swim."

How it relieved her pent-up feelings to talk to some one about her father! Already she felt she had known Jerry for years. In a moment she went on again:

"I cried meself to sleep THAT night, I did. An' many a night, too, on that steamer."

"I didn't want to come here--that I didn't. I only did it to please me father. He thought it 'ud be for me good."

"An' I wish I hadn't come--that I do. He's missin' me every minnit--an'

I'm missin' him. An' I'm not goin' to be happy here, ayther."

"I don't want to be a lady. An' they won't make me one ayther if I can help it. 'Ye can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear,' that's what me father always said. An' that's what I am. I'm a sow's ear."

She stopped,--her eyes fixed on the ground.

Jerry was more than moved at this entirely human and natural outbreak.

It was even as looking into some one's heart and brain and hearing thoughts spoken aloud and seeing the nervous workings of the heart.

When she described herself in such derogatory terms, a smile of relief played on Jerry's face as he leaned over to her and said:

"I'm afraid I cannot agree with you."