A Little Irish Girl by J. M. Callwell — Read

Miss Browne's feelings, as she drove homewards with Ella, were of a somewhat mixed nature. Roderick in his note had made as light of Ella's adventure, and of his own share in it, as possible; he had not the least wish to glorify himself, or to endeavour to pose as a hero in his uncle's eyes. None the less, had he been anyone else, Miss Browne would have been ready to fall at his feet in her gratitude to him for having rescued Ella from any position of peril. She had made up her mind from the first, however, that the O'Briens of Kilshane were an artful, designing family, who had come over to the little lonely house upon the cliffs specially to work their way into their uncle's good graces, and to oust Ella and her brother from the place which they held in his affections. Miss Browne, ordinarily the most simple-minded and unsuspicious of mortals, was almost inclined to imagine that it must have been by some crafty and deeply-laid plot that Ella's pony had been made to run away just at the gate of Kilshane, thereby forcing on an acquaintanceship between the two families.

Poor Miss Browne had been left an orphan without near relations, and had therefore become a governess at a very early age. She had taken charge of many children, and had been tossed to and fro in many directions before fate drifted her out to India to Mrs. Wyndham's bungalow at Dinapore upon the Ganges. For the first time in her lonely and unconsidered life she found herself treated with real kindliness and thought, for it was gentle Mrs. Wyndham's way to endeavour to make everyone dependent on her happy. Miss Browne repaid her employer's good-will by lavishing all her starved affections on her, and on the two fair-haired children who were in her charge. Before she had been two years with Mrs. Wyndham, the dread scourge cholera smote the cantonment. Captain Wyndham was amongst the first of its victims, and a few days later his young wife was stricken too. Miss Browne nursed her with unbounded and fearless devotion, and Mrs. Wyndham's last whisper to her was: