Peggy from Kerry by L.T. Meade

The Welsh family lived about twelve miles away from the Wyndhams. Mr. Welsh was a clergyman, with a very large country parish, and Mary was his eldest daughter. He was an Irishman by birth, and Mary had lived in Ireland, in the County Kerry, until she was seventeen years of age. She, therefore, adored Irish people; and when, after the death of an aunt, she was obliged to return to England, she loved to tell her brothers and sisters stories of the life she led in the old country, and fired their hearts with accounts of the kindly hearted peasants, of the bogs, of the flowers, the mosses, the ferns-the marvellous things that grew in Ireland and Ireland alone.

"Sure," cried Irish Mary-or Irish Molly, as the other children chose to call her-"it's just the Star of the Ocean, the Pearl of the Sea! " The others, all brought up in England, could not share Mary's enthusiasm, but they could adore Mary for herself.