This Highland tour afforded her great pleasure. "The 'felicity-hunters' have found more felicity than such hunters usually meet with." Unfortunately it ended badly. She caught cold, and was taken ill with a very severe attack of erysipelas that laid her up for ten days in a small Scotch inn. She had been ailing more or less for some months past, and this attack was probably only a climax. As soon as she could move, some friends took her into their house and nursed her tenderly, but she was weak for some time after. But almost before it was true, she tells her stepmother that she is off the invalid list. Scott was anxious to have her at Abbotsford, and promised to nurse her carefully. At the end of July she and her sisters yielded to his friendly entreaties, and spent a fortnight with him in his home. Lockhart speaks of the time of her visit as one of the happiest in Scott's life. Until the Misses Edgeworth arrived the season had been wet. It was a great joy to Sir Walter that with her appearance summer appeared too. On his expressing this, Miss Sophy Edgeworth mentioned the Irish tune, "You've brought the summer with you," and repeated the first line of the words Moore had adapted to it. "How pretty!" said Sir Walter; "Moore's the man for songs. Campbell can write an ode and I can write a ballad, but Moore beats us all at a song."
Miss Edgeworth was charmed with Scott and his home, with the excursions he took with them, with the drives she had with him in his little carriage, during which the flow of his anecdotes, wit and wisdom never ceased. His joyous manner and life of mind, his looks of fond pride in his children, the pleasantness of his easy manners, his keen sense of humor, enchanted her. She also liked Lady Scott, a liking that was returned. Miss Edgeworth considered her
A most kind-hearted, hospitable person, who had much more sense and more knowledge of character and discrimination than many of those who ridiculed her. I know I never can forget her kindness to me when I was ill at Abbotsford. Her last words at parting were: "God bless you! we shall never meet again." At that time it was much more likely that I should have died, I thought, than she.
This was not Miss Edgeworth's first visit to Edinburgh, and Lady Scott expressed her surprise that Sir Walter and she had not met earlier. "Why," said Sir Walter, with one of his queer looks, "you forget, my dear, Miss Edgeworth was not a lion then, and my mane, you know, was not grown at all."
Sir Walter 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 Misses Edgeworth 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-sty 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 often occurs in her letters, and whenever she is absent and there is anything especially amusing to relate, the letter is always addressed to her. In 1824 Miss Edgeworth lost her sister, Mrs. Beddoes. A few months before, Sophy was married to a Captain Fox. She was grieved to lose this sister and the marriage affected her deeply.