Peg O' My Heart Part 86

"It looks wondherful, father."

"I'll rade it to you in the long evenin's now we're together again."

"Do, father."

"And we won't separate any more, Peg, will we?"

"We wouldn't have this time but for you, father."

"Is it sorry ye are that ye went?"

"I don't know. I'm sorry o' coorse, and GLAD, too, in some ways."

"What made yez come back so sudden-like?"

"I only promised to stay a month."

"Didn't they want ye any longer?"

"In one way they did, an' in another they didn't. It's a long history--that's what it is. Let us sit down here as we used in the early days and I'll tell ye the whole o' the happenin's since I left ye."

She made him comfortable as had been her wont before, and, sitting on the little low stool at his feet, she told him the story of her month abroad and the impelling motive of her return.

She softened some things and omitted others--Ethel entirely. That episode should be locked forever in Peg's heart.

Jerry she touched on lightly.

O'Connell asked her many questions about him, remembering the tone of her later letters. And all the time he never took his eyes from her face, and he marked how it shone with a warm glow of pleasure when Jerry's name occurred, and how the gleam died away and settled into one of sadness when she spoke of her discovery that he had a t.i.tle.

"They're queer people, the English, Peg."

"They are, father."

"They're cool an' cunnin' an' crafty, me darlin'."

"Some o' them are fine an' honourable an' clever too, father."

"Was this fellow that called himself 'Jerry'--an' all the while was a Lord--that same?"

"Ivery bit of it, father."

"And he trated ye dacent-like?"

"Sure, I might have been a LADY, the way he behaved to me."

"Did he iver smile at ye?"

"Many's the time."

"Do ye remember the proverb I taught ye as a child?"

"Which wun, father? I know a hundred, so I do."

"'Beware the head of a bull, the heels of a horse, of the smile of an Englishman!'"

He paused and looked at her keenly.

"Do you remember that, Peg?"

"I do. There are Englishmen AND Englishmen. There are PLENTY o' bad Irish, and by the same token there are SOME good Englishmen. An' he is wun o' them."

"Why didn't he tell ye he was a Lord?"

"He didn't think it necessary. Over there they let ye gather from their manner what they are. They don't think it necessary to be tellin'

everyone."

"It's the strange ones they are, Peg, to be rulin' us."

"Some day, father, they'll go over to Ireland and learn what we're really like, and then they'll change everything. Jerry said that."

"They've begun to already. Sure, there's a man named Plunkett has done more in a few years than all the governments have accomplished in all the years they've been blunderin' along tryin' to thrample on us. An'

sure, Plunkett has a t.i.tle, too!"

"I know, father. Jerry knows him and often spoke of him."

"Did he, now?"

"He did. He said that so long as the English government 'ud listen to kindly, honourable men like Plunkett, there was hope of makin' Ireland a happy, contented people, an' Jerry said--"

"It seems Misther Jerry must have said a good deal to yez."

"Oh, he did. Sure, it was HE started me learnin' things, an' I am goin'

on learnin' now, father. Let us both learn."

"What?" cried the astonished father.

"O' coorse, I know ye have a lot o' knowledge, but it's the little FINE things we Irish have got to learn. An' they make life seem so much bigger an' grander by bein' considerate an' civil an' soft-spoken to each other. We've let the brutality of all the years that have gone before eat into us, and we have thrown off all the charm and formality of life, and in their place adopted a rough and crude manner to each other that does not come really from our hearts, but from the memory of our wrongs."

Unconsciously Peg had spoken as she had heard Jerry so often speak when he discussed the Irish. She had lowered her voice and concluded with quiet strength and dignity. The contrast to the beginning of the speech was electrical. O'Connell listened amazed.

"Did the same Jerry say that?"

"He did, father. An' much more. He knows Ireland well, an' loves it.

Many of his best friends are Irish--an'--"

"Wait a minnit. Have I ever been 'rough an' crude' in me manner to you, Peg?"

"Never, father. But, faith, YOU ought to be a Lord yerself. There isn't one o' them in England looks any betther than you do. It's in their MANNER that they have the advantage of us."