Walter, with one of his queer looks, "you forget, my dear, Miss Edge worth was not a lion then, and my mane, you know, was not grown at all."
Sir Walter Scott was as sorry to part with his guests as Miss Edgeworth was to go, but she felt that the longer she lingered the more difficult it would be to depart.
After paying some more Scotch visits, and a few Irish ones, the Miss Edgeworths returned home in September, and life once more became uneventful. Even to Mrs. Ruxton there was nothing to tell.
It is a long time since I have written to you, always waiting a day longer for somebody's coming or going, or sailing or launching. You ask what I am doing? Nothing, but reading and idling, and paving a gutter and yard to Honora's pig-stye and school-house. What have I been reading? The Siege of Valencia, by Mrs Hemans, which is an hour too long, but it contains some of the most beautiful poetry I have read for years.
Sickness, deaths, marriages and births were of frequent occurrence in that large family. Miss Edgeworth's heart was capacious and could answer to all calls made upon it. Whether it was to rejoice with those that rejoiced, or to weep with those that wept, she always responded.
It is the condition, the doom of advancing, advanced age, to see friend after friend go, for so much it detaches one from life; yet it still more makes us value the friends we have left. And continually, at every fresh blow, I really wonder, and am thankful, most truly thankful, that I have so many, so much left.
A young sister who had ailed for years, and was obliged to lie flat on a couch, was a constant source of solicitude. What could be done to divert her, to comfort her, or alleviate her sufferings, was always in Miss Edgeworth's mind. Lucy's name occurs often in her letters, and whenever she is absent and there is any-
