Mrs. Raffarty bawling to his lordship to beg he would never mind, and
not trouble himself.

'When they arrived at the bridge, they saw the man hanging from part
of the bridge, and apparently struggling in the water; but when they
attempted to pull him up, they found it was only a stuffed figure which
had been pulled into the stream by a real fish, which had seized hold of
the bait.'

The dinner-party is too long to quote, but it is written in Miss
Edgeworth's most racy and delightful vein of fun.

One more little fact should not be omitted in any mention of THE
ABSENTEE. One of the heroines is Miss Broadhurst, the heiress. The
Edgeworth family were much interested, soon after the book appeared, to
hear that a real living Miss Broadhurst, an heiress, had appeared upon
the scenes, and was, moreover, engaged to be married to Sneyd Edgeworth,
one of the eldest sons of the family. In the story, says Mrs. Edgeworth,
Miss Broadhurst selects from her lovers one who 'unites worth and wit,'
and then she goes on to quote an old epigram of Mr. Edgeworth's on
himself, which concluded with,'There's an Edge to his wit and there's
worth in his heart.'

Mr. Edgeworth, who was as usual busy building church spires for himself
and other people, abandoned his engineering for a time to criticise his
daughter's story, and he advised that the conclusion of THE ABSENTEE
should be a letter from Larry the postilion. 'He wrote one, she wrote
another,' says Mrs. Edgeworth. 'He much preferred hers, which is the
admirable finale of THE ABSENTEE.' And just about this time Lord Ross is
applied to, to frank the Edgeworth manuscripts.