"Sure wasn't me mother English?" Peg asked.

"She was."

"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