Three girls, brought up in poverty by a governess in London, migrate to Galway to occupy the castle, pending the discovery of the missing heir. The latter turns up, but is not what he was thought to be, and there are complications. The girls hear a great deal of folk-lore and legend from the servants and from the peasantry.
⸺ CYNTHIA’S BONNET SHOP. (Blackie). 5s. Eight illustr. by G. Demain Hammond, R.I.
“Cynthia, daughter of an impoverished Connaught family, wants to support a delicate mother. She and her star-struck sister go to London, where Cynthia opens a bonnet shop. How they find new interests in life is told with mingled humour and pathos.”—(Publ.).
⸺ GIANNETTA: A Girl’s Story of Herself. (Blackie). 3s. Six full-page illustr. by Lockhart Bogle.
“The story of a changeling who is suddenly transferred to the position of a rich English heiress. She develops into a good and accomplished woman, and has gained too much love and devotion to be a sufferer by the surrender of her estates.”—(Publ.).
⸺ THE RETURN OF MARY O’MURROUGH. Pp. 282. (Sands). 2s. (N.Y.: Benziger). 0.75. [1908]. Cheap ed., 1915.
Illustrated by twelve exceptionally good photos of Irish scenery and types. Scene: near Killarney. The girl comes back from the States to find her lover in jail, into which he had been thrown owing to the perjury and treachery of some of the police. We shall not reveal the sequel. The story is told with a simplicity and restraint which render the pathos all the more telling. It is faithful to reality, deeply Catholic, and wholly on the side of the peasantry, of whose situation under iniquitous laws a picture is drawn which can only be described as exasperating.
⸺ THE WICKED WOODS. Pp. 373. (Burns & Oates). New ed. 1909.
The hero is a scion of a family in which a curse, uttered against one of its founders by poor peasants whom he had dispossessed, had worked ruin for many generations. He is wholly unlike his ancestors, yet he, too, in a strange and tragic manner, falls under the influence of the curse—for a time. The story tells how he escapes from the terrible trial. Incidentally the best qualities of the peasantry are beautifully shown forth, especially the charity of the poor to one another.