Here the poor girl's tears began to flow.
'We only wish to see you get well,' said Miss Gwynne softly, 'and then we can help you to find your friends.'
'I have no friends in the world miss, asthore; my father died years ago, and my mother, brother, and sister all died of this horrible famine and pestilence! oh me! oh me!'
The tears flowed still faster, and Mrs Prothero begged her to be silent, and not to excite herself; but with restless eagerness she went on, as if anxious to pour forth her sorrows whilst she felt the strength to do so. It was remarkable that her English was very good, and that, with the exception of an occasional Irish epithet of endearment, you would scarcely have discovered her country. Indeed, the Welsh peculiarities of expression and accent sometimes appeared, so that it would have been difficult to say where she was born or brought up.
'I am going to look for my friends, if I live, and then, may be, I may be able to repay you for your kindness to me, a poor, wretched wanderer on the face of God's earth. If you'll be pleased to listen whilst I have the strength, I will tell you my 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.