Works Author:Maria Edgeworth Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: About this time I remember being much disturbed in my mind, by a letter which Mr. M'Leod received in my presence, and of which he read to me only a part: I never... more » rested till I saw the whole. The epistle proved well worth the trouble of deciphering : it related merely to the paving of my chicken-yard. Like the King of Prussia, who was said to be so jealous of power, that lie wanted to regulate all the mouse-traps in his dominions, I soon engrossed the management of a perplexing multiplicity of minute insignificant details. Alas! I discovered to my cost, that trouble is the inseparable attendant upon power: and many times, in the course of the first ten days of my reign, I was ready to give up my dignity from excessive fatigue. CHAPTER V. Early one morning, after having passed a feverish night, tortured in my dreams by the voices and faces of the people who had surrounded me the preceding day, I was wakened by the noise of somebody lighting my fire. I thought it was Ellinor, and the idea of the disinterested affection of this poor woman came full into my mind, contrasted in the strongest manner with the recollection of the selfish encroaching people by whom, of late, I had been worried. "How do you do, my good Ellinor?" said I: "I have not seen any thing of you this week past." " It's not Ellinor at all, my lard," said a new voice. "And why so? Why does not Ellinor light my fire?" " Myself does not know, my lard." " Go for her directly." " She's gone home these three days, my lard." " Gone! is she sick?" " Not as I know on, my lard. Myself does not know what ailed her, except she would be jealous of my lighting the fire. But I can't say what ailed her; for she went away without a word good or bad, when she seen me lighting this fire, which I did by the...« less