Susan Edmonstone Ferrier Ferrier visited Walter Scott at Ashiestiel Farm and House on the banks of the River Tweed, near Clovenfords in the Scottish Borders, and again in 1829 and 1831 at his new house, Abbotsford. They enjoyed each other's company and he wrote of her: "This gifted personage besides having great talents has conversation the least exigeant of any author, female at least..., simple, full of humour, and exceedingly ready at repartee, and all this without the least affectation of the blue stocking." He mentioned her in the same sentence as Maria Edgeworth and Frances Burney in 1825. Ferrier's account of the
On the Banks of Plum Creek town storekeeper's daughter, Nellie Oleson, who makes fun of Laura and Mary for being "country girls." Laura and Mary attend a party at the Olesons' home, and Ma has Laura and Mary invite all the girls (including Nellie) to a party at their house to reciprocate. The Ingalls go through very hard times when grasshoppers decimate the much-anticipated wheat crop, and lay so many eggs that there is no hope of a crop the following year. For two harvest seasons, Pa is forced to walk three hundred miles east to find work on farms that escaped the grasshopper plague. Laura