“Me!” she replied with a smile of astonishment, “are you imagining me
to be Mr. Elton’s object?”
“Such an imagination has crossed me, I own, Emma; and if it never
occurred to you before, you may as well take it into consideration
now.”
“Mr. Elton in love with me!—What an idea!”
“I do not say it is so; but you will do well to consider whether it is
so or not, and to regulate your behaviour accordingly. I think your
manners to him encouraging. I speak as a friend, Emma. You had better
look about you, and ascertain what you do, and what you mean to do.”
“I thank you; but I assure you you are quite mistaken. Mr. Elton and I
are very good friends, and nothing more;” and she walked on, amusing
herself in the consideration of the blunders which often arise from a
partial knowledge of circumstances, of the mistakes which people of
high pretensions to judgment are for ever falling into; and not very
well pleased with her brother for imagining her blind and ignorant, and
in want of counsel. He said no more.
Mr. Woodhouse had so completely made up his mind to the visit, that in
spite of the increasing coldness, he seemed to have no idea of
shrinking from it, and set forward at last most punctually with his
eldest daughter in his own carriage, with less apparent consciousness
of the weather than either of the others; too full of the wonder of his
own going, and the pleasure it was to afford at Randalls to see that it
was cold, and too well wrapt up to feel it. The cold, however, was
severe; and by the time the second carriage was in motion, a few flakes
of snow were finding their way down, and the sky had the appearance of
being so overcharged as to want only a milder air to produce a very
white world in a very short time.
Emma soon saw that her companion was not in the happiest humour. The
preparing and the going abroad in such weather, with the sacrifice of
his children after dinner, were evils, were disagreeables at least,
which Mr. John Knightley did not by any means like; he anticipated
nothing in the visit that could be at all worth the purchase; and the
whole of their drive to the vicarage was spent by him in expressing his
discontent.
“A man,” said he, “must have a very good opinion of himself when he
asks people to leave their own fireside, and encounter such a day as
this, for the sake of coming to see him. He must think himself a most
agreeable fellow; I could not do such a thing. It is the greatest
absurdity—Actually snowing at this moment!—The folly of not allowing
people to be comfortable at home—and the folly of people’s not staying
comfortably at home when they can! If we were obliged to go out such an
...continua
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