“And mine,” said Mr. Knightley warmly,
“is, that if he turn out any thing like it,
he will be the most insufferable fellow breathing!
What! at three-and-twenty to be the king of his company—the
great man— the practised politician, who
is to read every body’s character, and make
every body’s talents conduce to the display of
his own superiority; to be dispensing his flatteries
around, that he may make all appear like fools compared
with himself! My dear Emma, your own good sense
could not endure such a puppy when it came to the
point.”
“I will say no more about him,” cried
Emma, “you turn every thing to evil. We
are both prejudiced; you against, I for him; and we
have no chance of agreeing till he is really here.”
“Prejudiced! I am not prejudiced.”
“But I am very much, and without being at all
ashamed of it. My love for Mr. and Mrs. Weston
gives me a decided prejudice in his favour.”
“He is a person I never think of from one month’s
end to another,” said Mr. Knightley, with a
degree of vexation, which made Emma immediately talk
of something else, though she could not comprehend
why he should be angry.
To take a dislike to a young man, only because he
appeared to be of a different disposition from himself,
was unworthy the real liberality of mind which she
was always used to acknowledge in him; for with all
the high opinion of himself, which she had often laid
to his charge, she had never before for a moment supposed
it could make him unjust to the merit of another.
Emma and Harriet had been walking together one morning,
and, in Emma’s opinion, had been talking enough
of Mr. Elton for that day. She could not think
that Harriet’s solace or her own sins required
more; and she was therefore industriously getting
rid of the subject as they returned;—but
it burst out again when she thought she had succeeded,
and after speaking some time of what the poor must
suffer in winter, and receiving no other answer than
a very plaintive— “Mr. Elton is so
good to the poor!” she found something else must
be done.
They were just approaching the house where lived Mrs.
and Miss Bates. She determined to call upon them
and seek safety in numbers. There was always
sufficient reason for such an attention; Mrs. and
Miss Bates loved to be called on, and she knew she
was considered by the very few who presumed ever to
see imperfection in her, as rather negligent in that
respect, and as not contributing what she ought to
the stock of their scanty comforts.
She had had many a hint from Mr. Knightley and some
from her own heart, as to her deficiency—but
none were equal to counteract the persuasion of its
being very disagreeable,—a waste of time—tiresome
women— and all the horror of being in danger
of falling in with the second-rate and third-rate
of Highbury, who were calling on them for ever, and
therefore she seldom went near them. But now
she made the sudden resolution of not passing their
door without going in—observing, as she
proposed it to Harriet, that, as well as she could
calculate, they were just now quite safe from any
letter from Jane Fairfax.
