“Well, first of all, tell me your name.”
“Oh whisht! ma’am, what a short memory the Almighty has given you! Didn’t I say Peggy Desmond a score ov times?”
“Perhaps you did; but where are you living, Peggy Desmond?”
“At the back of beyont.”
“I never heard of that place. Where is it?”
“I can’t tell ye more than that. ’Tain’t far off, an’ yet it’s a good way off.”
“Have you any one belonging to you in the place?”
“Niver a sowl, an’ that’s the truth I’m telling ye. I was torn from thim as I loved, an’ I lived last night at the back of beyont, and here I be; an’ if ye’ll take me I’ll work for ye for next to nothing. I want to earn a few shillings to go back again to thim I love. I ain’t demented or anything of that sort; but I’m sore, sore at heart. Me roots have been torn up, an’ they’re bleeding all the time, only nothing on earth comforts them like feedin’ the fowls an’ milking the cows an’ runnin’ about in yer farmyard.”
“Well, to be sure,” said the woman, “you’re about the queerest child I ever heard of; you certainly don’t look mad, but you speak as if you were. At the back of beyont! What on earth do you mean?”
“It’s the way we have ov speakin’ in Ireland, ma’am. You can’t blame me for having the manners of me counthry.”