“Yes, you are, Peggy, you are quite in our class.”
“Ah, thin, I wouldn’t be tellin’ lies if I was ye.”
“Well, anyhow, whether you are in my class or not, I’m fond of you and I mean to be fonder, and I mean to kiss you, whether you like it or not. Come, Peggy, come; one warm kiss from an English girl to an Irish girl. Come, Peggy, come!”
Peggy submitted to the embrace, and as Molly flung both arms round her neck affectionately she suddenly felt a queer softening of the heart. She did not respond to the kiss; but as Molly reached the door of the schoolroom, on the way to her own room, the Irish girl rushed towards the door and embraced her tightly, saying, “Here’s from an Irish girl to an English girl!”
Peggy’s kiss was soft, her eyes were full of tears. Molly went soberly to her own room. Oh, how earnestly she trusted that Mary Welsh would come and tell her how she was to manage this wild young creature!
A few minutes later both girls walked slowly up the avenue. Peggy, from her point of vantage on the roof—which she now liked best as an exit—watched them. When they were out of sight, she climbed down by the aid of the yew-tree; then she ran swiftly along the shrubbery, and a good while before the girls reached the gates of Preston Manor Peggy had got there, and, with the agility of a young squirrel, had climbed up into a tall elm-tree. There she ensconced herself comfortably in the branches, and looked down and watched what was going on.
“I’ll see what kind that Mary Welsh is, whativer I do,” she said to herself. “Ah, thin, bedad, I can say the words comfortably while I’m alone. The trees don’t mind, nor the sky, nor does God in His heaven; but, thin, it’s moithered I am intirely!”
The girls, little knowing that Peggy was watching them, presently reached the gates. There was a lodge just inside the big gates, and the woman who lived at the lodge, Mrs. Jordan by name, came out and began to talk to the young ladies.
Peggy, up in her tree, could hear most of the words which passed between them. To her disgust, the words happened to be praises, extreme praises, of Miss Welsh.
Mrs. Jordan said, “I’m right glad she’s coming, miss; it’s good for sair e’en to see her.” Then the woman began a long story about when Jack scalded himself, and how wonderfully Mary Welsh managed, sitting up all night to mind him, and dressing his wounds herself, and he never crying at all when she touched him—that good he was—though a very torment when Miss Welsh was out of the room. Presently, however, the woman began to talk about Peggy. There was a little rustling sound in the elm-tree into which Peggy had climbed; the time, however, was midsummer, and, as the leaves were very thick on the tree, nobody noticed when the girl slipped down to a branch a little nearer the ground.