story.

'My mother was a Welshwoman, born in some part of South Wales; she was
the daughter of a clergyman, and respectably brought up. Her father
taught her a great many things that we ignorant people in Ireland used
to think a great deal of. Oh, she was a good and tender mother to me,
ladies, avourneen.

'My father was an Irishman, and a fine, handsome man. He was a soldier,
a corporal in the Welsh Fusiliers, and used to be called Corporal
O'Grady. He was going through this country to Ireland, to visit his
friends, on leave, when he first saw mother, and fell in love with her,
and she with him. She knew that her father would not be willing that
they should marry, so she ran away with him to Ireland. They travelled
about for some time with his regiment, but, after I was born, mother
went to settle in Ireland with father's family, and there she had three
other children, two boys and a girl. After this my father was wounded in
India, and got his discharge and his half-pay. He became a kind of
under-agent for a gentleman that lived in England, so we were very well
off as long as he lived; but he died when I was about twelve years old,
and then mother did not well know what to do. I remember my father's
death, and all our trouble, as if it was yesterday.

'She set up a little school, and for some years did pretty well. She
could teach all that the farmers' daughters wanted to learn, and I
helped her; so we managed to live. It was a hard struggle sometimes, but
everybody was kind to widow O'Grady and her orphans; God reward them.

'But the bad time came for poor Ireland; the famine visited us, and
then the pestilence! Ye have heard enough of the horrors, without doubt,
but not half of what they really were. We were all starving, dying--I
saw enough people die to make me wish myself dead hundreds of times, to
be hidden from the sight; but I was fated to live. You, ladies, in your
charity, have saved me again; but oh! if it were not wicked, I should
wish myself with my mother, brothers, and sister in heaven.'

Here the poor girl's sobs choked her speech, and Mrs Prothero entreated
her not to proceed.

'Only one word more, my ladies, and I have done. When they were all
gone--all--all--and I only left, I did not care what became of me. I
went about amongst those stricken down with the fever; but, woe is me, I
never caught it. I fasted from morning to night, day after day, but I
could not die of starvation; nothing would