"Then WHY do yez hate the English?"
"It 'ud take a long time to tell ye that, Peggy. Some day I will. There's many a reason why the Irish hate the English, and many a good reason too. But there's one why you and I should hate them, and hate them with all the bittherness that's in us."
"And what is it?" said Peg curiously.
"I'll tell ye. When yer mother and I were almost starvin', and she lyin' on a bed of sickness, she wrote to an Englishman and asked him to assist her. An' this is the reply she got: 'Ye've made yer bed; lie in it.' That was the answer she got the day before you were born, and she died givin' ye life. And by the same token the man that wrote that shameful message to a dyin' woman was her own brother."
"Her own brother, yer tellin' me?" asked Peg wrathfully.
"I am, Peg. Her own brother, I'm tellin' ye."
"It's bad luck that man'll have all his life!" said Peg fiercely. "To write me mother that—and she dyin'! Faith I'd like to see him some day—just meet him—and tell him—" she stopped, her little fingers clenched into a miniature fist. The hot colour was in her cheeks and she stamped her small foot in actual rage. "I'd like to meet him some day," she muttered.
"I hope ye never will, Peg," said her father solemnly. "And," he added, "don't let us ever talk of it again, me darlin'!"
And she never did. But she often thought of the incident and the memory of that brutal message was stamped vividly on her little brain.
The greatest excitements of her young life were going with her father to hear him speak. She made the most extraordinary collection of scraps of the speeches she had heard her father make for Home Rule. While he would be speaking she would listen intently, her lips apart, her little body tense with excitement, her little heart beating like a trip-hammer.