“There is no saying, indeed,” replied Harriet rather solemnly.

“But there may be pretty good guessing.  He will be a completely gross, vulgar farmer, totally inattentive to appearances, and thinking of nothing but profit and loss.”

“Will he, indeed?  That will be very bad.”

“How much his business engrosses him already is very plain from the circumstance of his forgetting to inquire for the book you recommended.  He was a great deal too full of the market to think of any thing else—­which is just as it should be, for a thriving man.  What has he to do with books?  And I have no doubt that he will thrive, and be a very rich man in time—­and his being illiterate and coarse need not disturb us.”

“I wonder he did not remember the book”—­was all Harriet’s answer, and spoken with a degree of grave displeasure which Emma thought might be safely left to itself.  She, therefore, said no more for some time.  Her next beginning was,

“In one respect, perhaps, Mr. Elton’s manners are superior to Mr. Knightley’s or Mr. Weston’s.  They have more gentleness.  They might be more safely held up as a pattern.  There is an openness, a quickness, almost a bluntness in Mr. Weston, which every body likes in him, because there is so much good-humour with it—­but that would not do to be copied.  Neither would Mr. Knightley’s downright, decided, commanding sort of manner, though it suits him very well; his figure, and look, and situation in life seem to allow it; but if any young man were to set about copying him, he would not be sufferable.  On the contrary, I think a young man might be very safely recommended to take Mr. Elton as a model.  Mr. Elton is good-humoured, cheerful, obliging, and gentle.  He seems to me to be grown particularly gentle of late.  I do not know whether he has any design of ingratiating himself with either of us, Harriet, by additional softness, but it strikes me that his manners are softer than they used to be.  If he means any thing, it must be to please you.  Did not I tell you what he said of you the other day?”

She then repeated some warm personal praise which she had drawn from Mr. Elton, and now did full justice to; and Harriet blushed and smiled, and said she had always thought Mr. Elton very agreeable.

Mr. Elton was the very person fixed on by Emma for driving the young farmer out of Harriet’s head.  She thought it would be an excellent match; and only too palpably desirable, natural, and probable, for her to have much merit in planning it.  She feared it was what every body else must think of and predict.  It was not likely, however, that any body should have equalled her in the date of the plan, as it had entered her brain during the very first evening of Harriet’s coming to Hartfield.  The longer she considered it, the greater was her sense of its expediency.  Mr. Elton’s situation was most suitable, quite the gentleman himself, and without low connexions;