We are much as you left us. I cannot buy any sheep yet, for the price has risen in the market prodigiously, and we must wait a little, but Walsh is to go to Smithfield this week to see how things are. In your directions you left out a very important word, whether the ferrule should be fixed in the bottom, or the seat of the Tilbury. I say the former, and Mama the latter. One makes the umbrella too low, the other too high, but by a little arrangement of mine, too long to explain, I have made it the right height for myself, bonnet, feathers, and all, and it will altogether be very comfortable. There is to be a meeting of all the Sunday Schools in the district next week at Bromley, and a collection, and a collation. We mean to eat up the collation, and give all our old clipped sixpences to the collection, which we think is a plan you would approve if you were here. Madden[57] has given us so much to do, we have not a minute’s spare time. We are duller than a hundred posts about Astronomy, and if you can find any planets for us in Paris, we shall be obliged to you, as we cannot find one on the globe, and Madden only laughs at us. There! Good-bye, my dearest George. Take care of your little self. Your affectionate EMILY EDEN. _Miss Eden to Lady Buckinghamshire_. EDEN FARM, _Thursday, August_ 31, 1815. MY DEAREST SISTER, Did Mama write to you yesterday? I wish I knew, but she is unluckily upstairs, and indeed I must say is hardly ever in the way when I want her. I had meant to have answered your letter yesterday, but Mary, Miss Vansittart, and I went a-pleasuring, so that I had not time. We went in the morning to Greenwich, where Mr. Van.[58] met us in the Admiralty barge, and took us to the steamboat. We found there Lord and Lady Liverpool,[59] my dear Letitia Taylor, Lady Georgina, and Lady Emily Bathurst, Lord Bathurst, Lord Harrowby, Sir G. Hope, Sir George Warrender, Mr. Lushington, etc. Lady Liverpool still retains the notion that I am Miss Eden in the country, as well as in town, and introduced Mary as Miss E. Eden, and me as Miss Eden to all the company, and Mr. Van. insisted on calling Miss Taylor--Miss Rickets, so that the most curious effect steam has had yet was making a large company answer to wrong names. The Invention itself, I believe, was supposed to succeed perfectly. We had a very pleasant row, or steaming, or whatever else it may be called, beyond Woolwich, and back to Greenwich again in three hours, during which time we also contrived to eat a large breakfast, and a larger dinner and dessert. Lord Liverpool had some very improper purring scenes, and Lady Liverpool was very good-natured.... It must be an amusing sight to see Sarah[60] scolding the post-boy for not driving fast enough, or calling to the hostler for “a pair of horses to St. Albans immediately,” or adding up the innkeeper’s account, and giving him something over for the scoundrel that drove.