"Oh, I do want to improve meself. NOW I wish I HAD been born a lady. I'd be more worthy of—"
"WHAT? WHOM?" asked Jerry urgently and waiting anxiously for her answer.
Peg regained control of herself, and cowering down again on to the piano-stool she went on hurriedly.
"I want knowledge now. I know what you mean by bein' at a disadvantage. I used to despise learnin'. I've laughed at it. I never will again. Why I can't even talk yer language. Every wurrd I use is wrong. This book ye gave me—the 'LOVE STORIES OF THE WORLD,' I've never seen anythin' like it. I never knew of such people. I didn't dhream what a wondherful power in the wurrld was the power of love. I used to think it somethin' to kape to yerself and never spake of out in the open. Now I know it's the one great big wondherful power in the wurrld. It's me love for me father has kept faith and hope alive in me heart. I was happy with him. I never wanted to lave him. Now I see there is another happiness, too an' it's beyond me. I'm no one's equal. I'm just a little Irish nothin'—"
"Don't say that," Jerry interrupted. "There's an obstinate bad something in me that holds me back every time I want to go forward. Sometimes the good little somethin' tries so hard to win, but the bad bates it. It just bates it, it does."
"What you call the bad is the cry of youth that resents being curbed: and the GOOD is the WOMAN in you struggling for an outlet," explained Jerry.
"Will you help me to give it an outlet, Mr. Jerry?"
"In any way in my power, Peg."
As they stood looking at each other the momentary something was trembling on both their lips and beating in both of their hearts. The something—old as time, yet new as birth—that great transmuter of affection into love, of hope into faith. It had come to them—yet neither dared speak.
Peg read his silence wrongly. She blushed to the roots of her hair and her heart beat fast with shame. She laughed a deliberately misleading laugh and, looking up roguishly at him, said, her eyes dancing with apparent mischief, though the tear lurked behind the lid: