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 compassion 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 Mass 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 ship. And then only at the last minnit. He laughed and joked with me all the time we were together—but when the ship 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 ship 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: