"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 they know more than me father. If they'd do what me father tells them sure there'd be no more throuble in Ireland at all."
"Really?" said Jerry, quite interestedly.
"Not a bit of throuble. I wish me father was here to explain it to ye. He could tell ye the whole thing in a couple of hours. I wish he were here now just to give you an example of what fine speakin' really is. Do you like speeches?"
"Very much—sometimes," replied Jerry, guardedly.
"Me father is wondherful on a platform with a lot o' people in front of him. He's wondherful. I've seen him take two or three hundred people who didn't know they had a grievance in the wurrld—the poor cratures—they were just contented to go on bein' ground down and trampled on and they not knowing a thing about it—I've seen me father take that crowd and in five minutes, afther he had started spakin' to them ye wouldn't know they were the same people. They were all shoutin' at once, and they had murther in their eye and it was blood they were afther. They wanted to reform somethin'—they weren't sure what—but they wanted to do it—an' at the cost of life. Me father could have led them anywhere. It's a wondherful POWER he was. And magnetism. He just looks at the wake wuns an' they wilt. He turns to the brave wuns and they're ready to face cannon-balls for him. He's a born leader—that's what he is, a born leader!" She warmed to her subject: she was on her hobby-horse and she would ride it as far as this quiet stranger would let her. She went on again:
"Ye know the English government are very much frightened of me father. They are indade. They put him in prison once—before I was born. They were so afraid of him they put him in prison. I wish ye could see him!" she said regretfully.