I am going to write a story for boys, [Footnote: _The Good Aunt._] which
will, I believe, make a volume to follow the _Good French Governess._ My
father thinks a volume of trials and a volume of plays would be good for
children. He met the other day with two men who were ready to go to law
about a horse which one had bought from the other, because he had one
little fault. "What is the fault?" said my father. "Sir, the horse was
standing with us all the other day in our cabin at the fire, and plump
he fell down upon the middle of the fire and put it out; and it was a
mercy he didn't kill my wife and children as he fell into the midst of
them all. But this is not all, sir; he strayed into a neighbour's field
of oats, and fell down in the midst of the oats, and spoiled as much as
he could have eaten honestly in a week. But that's not all, sir; one
day, please your honour, I rode him out in a hurry to a fair, and he lay
down with me in the ford, and I lost my fair."

* * * * *

For the last few years Mrs. Elizabeth Edgeworth's sisters, Charlotte and
Mary Sneyd, had lived entirely at Edgeworthstown, not only beloved and
honoured by the children of their two sisters, but tenderly welcomed and
cherished by the children of their predecessor, especially by Maria, to
whom no real aunts could have been more dear. During the seventeen years
through which her married life lasted, Mrs. Elizabeth Edgeworth had
become increasingly the centre of the family circle, to which she had
herself added five sons and four daughters. In every relation of life
she was admirable. Through the summer of 1797 her health rapidly
declined, and in November she died.

Mr. Edgeworth, then past fifty, had truly valued his third wife, of whom
he said that he had "never seen her out of temper, and never received