about my looks. Be satisfied with doctoring and coddling yourself and
the children, and let me look as I chuse."

"I did not thoroughly understand what you were telling your brother,"
cried Emma, "about your friend Mr. Graham's intending to have a bailiff
from Scotland, to look after his new estate. What will it answer? Will
not the old prejudice be too strong?"

And she talked in this way so long and successfully that, when forced to
give her attention again to her father and sister, she had nothing
worse to hear than Isabella's kind inquiry after Jane Fairfax; and Jane
Fairfax, though no great favourite with her in general, she was at that
moment very happy to assist in praising.

"That sweet, amiable Jane Fairfax!" said Mrs. John Knightley.--"It
is so long since I have seen her, except now and then for a moment
accidentally in town! What happiness it must be to her good old
grandmother and excellent aunt, when she comes to visit them! I always
regret excessively on dear Emma's account that she cannot be more at
Highbury; but now their daughter is married, I suppose Colonel and Mrs.
Campbell will not be able to part with her at all. She would be such a
delightful companion for Emma."

Mr. Woodhouse agreed to it all, but added,

"Our little friend Harriet Smith, however, is just such another pretty
kind of young person. You will like Harriet. Emma could not have a
better companion than Harriet."

"I am most happy to hear it--but only Jane Fairfax one knows to be so
very accomplished and superior!--and exactly Emma's age."

This topic was discussed very happily, and others succeeded of similar
moment, and passed away with similar harmony; but the evening did not
close without a little return of agitation. The gruel came and supplied
a great deal to be said--much praise and many comments--undoubting
decision of its wholesomeness for every constitution, and pretty
severe Philippics upon the many houses where it was never met with
tolerable;--but, unfortunately, among the failures which the daughter
had to instance, the most recent, and therefore most prominent, was in
her own cook at South End, a young woman hired for the time, who never
had been able to understand what she meant by a basin of nice smooth
gruel, thin, but not too thin. Often as she had wished for and ordered
it, she had never been able to get any thing tolerable. Here was a
dangerous opening.

"Ah!" said Mr. Woodhouse, shaking his head and fixing