“I am sure you were of use to me,” cried Emma. “I was very often influenced rightly by you–oftener than I would own at the time. I am very sure you did me good. And if poor little Anna Weston is to be spoiled, it will be the greatest humanity in you to do as much for her as you have done for me, except falling in love with her when she is thirteen.”
“How often, when you were a girl, have you said to me, with one of your saucy looks–`Mr. Knightley, I am going to do so-and-so; papa says I may, or I have Miss Taylor’s leave’–something which, you knew, I did not approve. In such cases my interference was giving you two bad feelings instead of one.”
“What an amiable creature I was!–No wonder you should hold my speeches in such affectionate remembrance.”
“`Mr. Knightley.’–You always called me, `Mr. Knightley;’ and, from habit, it has not so very formal a sound.–And yet it is formal. I want you to call me something else, but I do not know what.”
“I remember once calling you `George,’ in one of my amiable fits, about ten years ago. I did it because I thought it would offend you; but, as you made no objection, I never did it again.”
“And cannot you call me `George’ now?”
“Impossible!–I never can call you any thing but `Mr. Knightley.’ I will not promise even to equal the elegant terseness of Mrs. Elton, by calling you Mr. K.–But I will promise,” she added presently, laughing and blushing–“I will promise to call you once by your Christian name. I do not say when, but perhaps you may guess where;–in the building in which N. takes M. for better, for worse.”
Emma grieved that she could not be more openly just to one important service which his better sense would have rendered her, to the advice which would have saved her from the worst of all her womanly follies–her wilful intimacy with Harriet Smith; but it was too tender a subject.–She could not enter on it.– Harriet was very seldom mentioned between them. This, on his side, might merely proceed from her not being thought of; but Emma was rather inclined to attribute it to delicacy, and a suspicion, from some appearances, that their friendship were declining. She was aware herself, that, parting under any other circumstances, they certainly should have corresponded more, and that her intelligence would not have rested, as it now almost wholly did, on Isabella’s letters. He might observe that it was so. The pain of being obliged to practise concealment towards him, was very little inferior to the pain of having made Harriet unhappy.
Isabella sent quite as good an account of her visitor as could be expected; on her first arrival she had thought her out of spirits, which appeared perfectly natural, as there was a dentist to be consulted; but, since that business had been over, she did not appear to find Harriet different from what she had known her before.– Isabella, to be sure, was no very quick observer; yet if Harriet had not been equal to playing with the children, it would not have escaped her. Emma’s comforts and hopes were most agreeably carried on, by Harriet’s being to stay longer; her fortnight was likely to be a month at least. Mr. and Mrs. John Knightley were to come down in August, and she was invited to remain till they could bring her back.
“John does not even mention your friend,” said Mr. Knightley. “Here is his answer, if you like to see it.”
It was the answer to the communication of his intended marriage. Emma accepted it with a very eager hand, with an impatience all alive to know what he would say about it, and not at all checked by hearing that her friend was unmentioned.
“John enters like a brother into my happiness,” continued Mr. Knightley, “but he is no complimenter; and though I well know him to have, likewise, a most brotherly affection for you, he is so far from making flourishes, that any other young woman might think him rather cool in her praise. But I am not afraid of your seeing what he writes.”