“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.

VOLUME II

CHAPTER I

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.