“You don’t know how to account for me very well, do you?” taunted Marna daringly, when they had indulged their inclination for each other’s society for a few days.  “You wonder about me because I’m so streaked.  I suppose you see vestiges of the farm girl peeping through the operatic student.  Wouldn’t you like me to explain myself?”

She had an iridescent personality, made up of sudden shynesses, of bright flashes of bravado, of tenderness and hauteur, and she contrived to be fascinating in all of them.  She held Kate as the Ancient Mariner held the wedding-guest.

“Of course I’d love to know all about you,” answered Kate.  “Inquisitiveness is the most marked of my characteristics.  But I don’t want you to tell me any more than I deserve to hear.”

“You deserve everything,” cried Marna, seizing Kate’s firm hand in her own soft one, “because you understand friendship.  Why, I always said it could be as swift and surprising as love, and just as mysterious.  You take it that way, too, so you deserve a great deal.  Well, to begin with, I’m Irish.”

Kate’s laugh could be heard as far as the kitchen, where Mrs. Dennison was wishing the people would come so that she could dish up the soup.  Marna laughed, too.

“You guessed it?” she cried.  She didn’t seem to think it so obvious as Kate’s laugh indicated.

“You don’t leave a thing to the imagination in that direction,” Kate cried.  “Irish?  As Irish as the shamrock!  Go on.”

“Dear me, I want to begin so far back!  You see, I don’t merely belong to modern Ireland.  I’m—­well, I’m traditional.  At least, Great-Grandfather Cartan, who came over to Wisconsin with a company of immigrants, could tell you things about our ancestors that would make you feel as if we came up out of the Irish hills.  And great-grandfather, he actually looked legendary himself.  Why, do you know, he came over with these people to be their story-teller!”

“Their story-teller?”

“Yes, just that—­their minstrel, you understand.  And that’s what my people were, ’way back, minstrels.  All the way over on the ship, when the people were weeping for homesickness, or sitting dreaming about the new land, or falling sick, or getting wild and vicious, it was great-granddaddy’s place to bring them to themselves with his stories.  Then when they all went on to Wisconsin and took up their land, they selected a small beautiful piece for great-grandfather, and built him a log house, and helped him with his crops.  He, for his part, went over the countryside and was welcomed everywhere, and carried all the friendly news and gossip he could gather, and sat about the fire nights, telling tales of the old times, and keeping the ancient stories and the ancient tongue alive for them.”

“You mean he used the Gaelic?”

“What else would he be using, and himself the descendant of minstrels?  But after a time he learned the English, too, and he used that in his latter years because the understanding of the Gaelic began to die out.”