There is nothing I would not have given to escape the journey to Nocton. I had a sort of cowardly wish that George would not let me go (though I would have gone too, at all events), and I was almost sorry when his letter began, “You are quite right, and so go.” And yet I have been often pretending to wish that I had more positive duties to do. We are such horrid hypocrites to ourselves. I am going to Nocton, I suppose, from the same feelings that lead Catholics to go up the Scala Sancta on their knees--a sort of superstition. It must be right, it is so unnatural and disagreeable; and yet I am very fond of Sister, and Sarah was once very kind to me, and is now again. It is very wrong; when you praised me in your letter it smote my conscience. Almost everybody but me has a pleasure in doing right. I have often thought how much you must have to learn on the subject of calamity for the loss of friends, but do not learn it before you must. Lord Grantham has been such a comfort to them all. Your most affectionate E. E. _Miss Eden to Miss Villiers._ NOCTON, LINCOLNSHIRE, _Monday evening, December 13, 1826_. Bless your foolish heart! No, child, there is nothing the matter--never _was_ anything worth mentioning. We have ruralized some time in this rustic Bedlam, and some of us got loose on Wednesday; but we are all caught and shut up again, and there is no harm done except 250 guineas gone and spent in post-horses, and we are all thin and exhausted with anxiety and shame, some for themselves, and some for others. I believe I sent you, at the time of Clarke’s[238] last visit, my farce of the new “Mayor of Garratt,” with the plot made out into scenes, and specimens of the dialogue; but a good five-act comedy has written itself since Wednesday. Sarah is willing to laugh at it all herself now, and does so, I hear;--and after all, poor thing, it is no wonder she is nervous about health just now. All her fears I can excuse, with the death of her child from mismanagement constantly weighing on her mind; and the folly she is betrayed into, her fear is responsible for; but as she knows that her mind is beyond her own control, the provoking thing is that from the moment she begins to be ungovernable, she refuses to see anybody except servants who cannot contradict her.