When Honora was dying she had solemnly begged her husband and her sister Elizabeth to marry each other after her own death. Such marriages at that time were not illegal, and eight months after Honora’s death her sister and Mr. Edgeworth were married in St. Andrew’s Church, Holborn. Not long after this the first really important event of Maria’s life took place, when she went with her father and the rest of his family to take up her residence in her Irish home. At the impressionable age of fifteen, after having lived long enough in England to judge of the differences between the two countries, she was introduced to an intimate acquaintance with rural life in Ireland. Her father employed no agent for the management of his property, but invited and expected Maria to help him in all his business. In this way she acquired a thorough insight into the charm, the weakness and the strength, the humour and the melancholy of the Irish character. From 1782, when Mr. Edgeworth and his family returned to live at their Irish home, dates not only Maria Edgeworth’s close observation of Irish character and customs, but also the very painstaking literary training which she began to receive from her father. Up to this time Maria had been much at school; owing to the delicate health of her first step-mother, it was considered best that her education should be mainly carried on elsewhere than at home. Now, however, Mr. Edgeworth divided his time between the management of his estates and the education of his children, and to Maria’s literary education in particular he devoted himself with singular zeal and assiduity. She was continually practised by him in systematic observing and writing; she was instructed to prepare stories in outline. “None of your drapery,” her father would say; “I can imagine all that. Let me see the bare skeleton.” At this stage her compositions would be altered, revised, and amended by him, and then returned to her for completion.