mistaken if your sex in
general would not think such beauty, and such temper, the highest claims
a woman could possess."

"Upon my word, Emma, to hear you abusing the reason you have, is almost
enough to make me think so too. Better be without sense, than misapply
it as you do."

"To be sure!" cried she playfully. "I know _that_ is the feeling of
you all. I know that such a girl as Harriet is exactly what every
man delights in--what at once bewitches his senses and satisfies his
judgment. Oh! Harriet may pick and chuse. Were you, yourself, ever to
marry, she is the very woman for you. And is she, at seventeen, just
entering into life, just beginning to be known, to be wondered at
because she does not accept the first offer she receives? No--pray let
her have time to look about her."

"I have always thought it a very foolish intimacy," said Mr. Knightley
presently, "though I have kept my thoughts to myself; but I now perceive
that it will be a very unfortunate one for Harriet. You will puff her up
with such ideas of her own beauty, and of what she has a claim to, that,
in a little while, nobody within her reach will be good enough for her.
Vanity working on a weak head, produces every sort of mischief. Nothing
so easy as for a young lady to raise her expectations too high. Miss
Harriet Smith may not find offers of marriage flow in so fast, though
she is a very pretty girl. Men of sense, whatever you may chuse to
say, do not want silly wives. Men of family would not be very fond of
connecting themselves with a girl of such obscurity--and most prudent
men would be afraid of the inconvenience and disgrace they might be
involved in, when the mystery of her parentage came to be revealed. Let
her marry Robert Martin, and she is safe, respectable, and happy for
ever; but if you encourage her to expect to marry greatly, and teach her
to be satisfied with nothing less than a man of consequence and large
fortune, she may be a parlour-boarder at Mrs. Goddard's all the rest
of her life--or, at least, (for Harriet Smith is a girl who will marry
somebody or other,) till she grow desperate, and is glad to catch at the
old writing-master's son."

"We think so very differently on this point, Mr. Knightley, that there
can be no use in canvassing it. We shall only be making each other more
angry. But as to my _letting_ her marry Robert Martin, it is impossible;
she has refused him, and so decidedly, I think, as must prevent any
secon