"They resent my methods. I'm a new
farmer."

"Faith ye must be."

"To sum up my career I can do a whole lot of things fairly well and
none of them well enough to brag about."

"Just like me father," she said interestedly.

"You flatter me," he replied courteously.

Peg thought she detected a note of sarcasm. She turned on him fiercely:

"I know I do. There isn't a man in the whole wurrld like me father. Not
a man in the wurrld. But he says he's a rollin' stone and they don't
amount to much in a hard-hearted wurrld that's all for makin' dollars."

"Your father is right," agreed Jerry. "Money is the standard to-day and
we're all valued by it."

"And he's got none," cried Peg. Thoughts were coming thick and fast
through her little brain. To speak of her father was to want to be near
him. And she wanted him there now for that polished, well-bred
gentleman to see what a wonderful man he was. She suddenly said:

"Well, he's got me. I've had enough of this place. I'm goin' home now."
She started up the staircase leading to the Mauve Room.

Jerry called after her anxiously:

"No, no! Miss O'Connell. Don't go like that."

"I must," said Peg from the top of the stairs. "What will I get here
but to be laughed at and jeered at by a lot of people that are not fit
to even look at me father. Who are they I'd like to know that I mustn't
speak his name in their presence? I love me father and sure it's easier
to suffer for the want of food than the want of love!"

Suddenly she raised one hand above her head and in the manner and tone
of a public-speaker she astounded Jerry with the following outburst:

"An' that's what the Irish are doin' all over the wurrld. They're
driven out of their own country by the English and become wandherers on
the face of the earth and nothin' they ever EARN'LL make up to them for
the separation from their homes and their loved ones!" She finished the
peroration on a high note and with a forced manner such as she had
frequently heard on the platform.

She smiled at the astonished Jerry and asked him:

"Do ye know what that is?"

"I haven't the least idea," he answered truthfully.

"That's out of one of me father's speeches. Me father makes grand
speeches. He makes them in the Cause of Ireland."

"Oh, really! In the Cause of Ireland, eh?" said Jerry.

"Yes. He's been strugglin' all his life to make Ireland free--to get
her Home Rule, ye know. But the English are so ignorant. They think