“You must say ‘speak,’ not ‘spake.’”
“Speaks the same. Oh, me word, there seems no flavour in that!”
“Now listen to me, Peggy. I will write out a list of the words you must say instead of the words you do say; and I will ask Mrs. Wyndham to let you sit next me at lunch, and whenever you say a word you oughtn’t to say I’ll just give you a gentle little push with my hand. I won’t correct you all the time, for you can’t possibly, my dear child, learn our way of speaking all at once. But will you listen to me—you will try and copy me, won’t you? For I love Old Ireland, and for that matter, Peggy my dear, I love the very part of Ireland you love, for we both have come from the County Kerry.”
“Oh, wusha, wurra, wurra, wurra! Let me dance up and down the room! An’ did ye see the mountains ov her, and the lakes ov her, an’ did ye see the clouds come down, forming a nightcap on some ov the mountains; an’ did ye see the flowers all a-blowin’ and a-growin’, an’ the little bastes in the fields, an’ the little hins? An’, oh my! wurra, wurra! to think of it!”
“Now, Peggy, don’t you think you can express all these feelings without saying, ‘my’ and ‘wurra, wurra’?”
“I can’t, Miss Mary Molly Polly, I can’t.”
“In the first place, dear, you mustn’t say ‘miss’; you are to say ‘Mary’ to me.”
“Mary! I wouldn’t take the liberty; not if you was to beat me black an’ blue.”
“But if I ask you?”
“I couldn’t, Miss Mary—I beg your pardon—Mary, that is.”