eniably true about her--her reality. Having established this fact
beyond a doubt, it was a simple matter to like her and trust her.

No one had ever thought it necessary to question Patsy about her
nationality; it was too obvious. Concerning her past and her family
she answered every one alike: "Sure, I was born without either. I was
found by accident, just, one morning hanging on to the thorn of a
Killarney rose-bush that happened to be growing by the Brittany
coast. They say I was found by the Physician to the King, who was
traveling past, and that's how it comes I can speak French and King's
English equally pure; although I'm not denying I prefer them both
with a bit of brogue." She always thought in Irish--straight, Donegal
Irish--with a dropping of final g's, a bur to the r's, and a "ye"
for a "you." Invariably this was her manner of speech with those she
loved, or toward whom she felt the kinship of sympathetic
understanding.

To those who pushed their inquisitiveness about ancestry to the
breaking-point Patsy blinked a pair of steely-blue eyes while she
wrinkled her forehead into a speculative frown: "Faith! I can hearken
back to Adam the same as yourselves; but if it's some one more modern
you're asking for--there's that rascal, Dan O'Connell. He's too long
dead to deny any claim I might put on him, so devil a word will I be
saying. Only--if ye should find by chance, any time, that I'd rather
fight with my wits than my fists, ye can lay that to Dan's door;
along with the stubbornness of a tinker's ass."

People had been known to pry into her religion; and on these Patsy
smiled indulgently as one does sometimes on overcurious children.
"Sure, I believe in every one--and as for a church, there's not a
place that goes by the name--synagogue, meeting-house, or
cathedral--that I can't be finding a wee bit of God waiting inside
for me. But I'll own to it, honestly, that when I'm out seeking Him,
I find Him easiest on some hilltop, with the wind blowing hard from
the sea and never a human soul in sight."

This was approximately all the world and the press knew of Patsy
O'Connell, barring the fact that she was neighboring in the twenties,
was fresh, unspoiled, and charming, and that she had played the
ingenue parts with the National Players, revealing an art that
promised a good future, should luck bring the chance. Unfortunately
this chance was not numbered among the prospects Patsy reviewed from
the edge of her h