He looked at her intently a moment and was just going to speak when she broke in quickly:
"What's the use of learnin' the heights of mountains whose names I can't pronounce and I'm never goin' to climb? And I'm very much surprised at me aunt allowin' me to read about the doin's of a lot of dead kings who did things we ought to thry and forget."
"They made history," said Jerry. "Well, they ought to have been ashamed of themselves. I don't care how high Mont Blanc is nor when William the Conqueror landed in England."
"Oh, nonsense!" reasoned Jerry—
"I tell ye I HATE English history. It makes all me Irish blood boil." Suddenly she burst into a reproduction of the far-off father, suiting action to word and climaxing at the end, as she had so often heard him finish:
"'What IS England? What is it, I say. I'll tell ye! A mane little bit of counthry thramplin' down a fine race like OURS!' That's what me father sez, and that's the way he sez it. An' when he brings his fist down like that—" and she showed Jerry exactly how her father did it—"when he brings his fist down like THAT, it doesn't matther how many people are listenin' to him, there isn't one dares to conthradict him. Me father feels very strongly about English History. An' I don't want to learn it."
"Is it fair to your aunt?" asked Jerry.
Peg grew sullen and gloomy. She liked to be praised, but all she ever got in that house was blame. And now he was following the way of the others. It was hard. No one understood her.
"Is it fair to your aunt?" he repeated.
"No. I don't suppose it is."