* * * * *

SNOW-WOMAN'S STORY.

By Miss Edgeworth.


"Yes, madam, I bees an Englishwoman, though so low now and untidy
like--it's a shame to think of it--a Manchester woman, ma'am--and my
people was once in a bettermost sort of way--but sore pinched latterly."
She sighed, and paused.

"I married an Irishman, madam," continued she, and sighed again.

"I hope he gave you no reason to sigh," said Gerald's father.

"Ah, no, sir, never!" answered the Englishwoman, with a faint sweet
smile. "Brian Dermody is a good man, and was always a koind husband to
me, as far and as long as ever he could, I will say that--but my friends
misliked him--no help for it. He is a soldier, sir,--of the
forty-fifth. So I followed my husband's fortins, as nat'ral, through the
world, till he was ordered to Ireland. Then he brought the children
over, and settled us down there at Bogafin in a little shop with his
mother--a widow. She was very koind too. But no need to tire you with
telling all. She married again, ma'am, a man young enough to be her
son--a nice man he was to look at too--a gentleman's servant he had
been. Then they set up in a public-house. Then the whiskey, ma'am, that
they bees all so fond of--he took to drinking it in the morning even,
ma'am--and that was bad, to my thinking."