Thus Mrs. Sherwood replaces the iron collar after her bursts of freedom. It is hardly a disguise. It does not change her personality, it simply keeps her rigid.
Even Mrs. Fairchild had enjoyed some interludes; but that was when she was little and naughty. She actually confessed to her Family that “a little girl employed about the house” had tempted her on one occasion to climb a cherry-tree.
Afterwards her aunts talked to her whilst she cried very much. “Think of the shame and disgrace”, said they, “of climbing trees in such low company, after all the care and pains we have taken and the delicate manner in which we have reared you!”
But she also remembered and quoted the words of that “little girl employed about the house”:
“Oh, Miss, Miss! I can see from where I am all the town and both the churches, and here is such plenty of cherries! Do come up!”
This is a prose foretaste of The Child’s Garden.
CHAPTER VIII
MISS EDGEWORTH’S TALES FOR CHILDREN
Life at Edgeworthstown—Educational adventures—Practical Education—First stories—The Parent’s Assistant—New elements—“Waste Not, Want Not”: the Geometric plot—“Little plays”—Settings of the tales—Practical interests—Characters—“Little touches”—Early Lessons—“The Purple Jar”—Harry and Lucy—“Nonsense in season”—Moral Tales—Qualities of Miss Edgeworth’s tales—“La triste utilité”—The Edgeworth fairy—Dr. Johnson as the fairies’ champion—Miss Edgeworth and her predecessors—The magic of science and life.
Maria Edgeworth was sixteen years old when her father brought her to his Irish estate of Edgeworthstown.[148] Her childhood had been full of quiet preoccupations, and it argues much for the impersonal methods of Mr. Day that, although he had grounded her in Rousseau’s theory, she was in no way dominated by it.