a new-born babe, fresh from the discovery that the soldier-husband,
as she thought, and who had at least gone before the praste with
her,' and brought her from her Kilkenny home, was previously husband
to another woman. She was tenderly cared for by Mr. Underwood's
mother, who was then alive, and keeping house for the whole party at
the Rectory; and having come into the Vale Leston nursery, she never
left it. Her own child died in teething, and she clung so
passionately to her nursling, that Mrs. Underwood had no heart to
separate them, Roman Catholic though she was, and difficult to
dispose of. She was not the usual talking merry Irishwoman; if ever
she had been such, her heart was broken; and she was always meek,
quiet, subdued, and attentive; forgetful sometimes, but tender and
trustworthy to the last degree with the children.

She had held fast to the family in their reverses, and no more
thought of not sharing their lot than one of their children. Indeed,
it would not have been much more possible to send her out to shift
for herself in England; and her own people seemed to have vanished in
the famine, for her letters, with her savings, came back from the
dead-letter office. She put her shoulder to the burthen, and, with
one small scrub under her, got through an amazing amount of work: and
though her great deep liquid brown eyes looked as pathetic as ever,
she certainly was in far better spirits than when she sat in the
nursery. To be sure, she was a much better nurse than she was a cook;
but as both could not be had, Mrs. Underwood was content and thankful
to have a servant so entirely one with themselves in interests and
affections; and who had the further perfection of never wanting any
society but the children's; shrinking from English gossips, and never
showing a weakness, save for Irish tramps. Moreover, she was a
prodigious knitter; and it was her boast that not one of the six