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Your time has been properly and
delicately spent, if you have been endeavouring for the last four
years to bring about this marriage. A worthy employment for a young
lady's mind! But if, which I rather imagine, your making the match,
as you call it, means only your planning it, your saying to yourself
one idle day, `I think it would be a very good thing for Miss Taylor
if Mr. Weston were to marry her,' and saying it again to yourself
every now and then afterwards, why do you talk of success? Where
is your merit? What are you proud of? You made a lucky guess;
and _that_ is all that can be said."

"And have you never known the pleasure and triumph of a lucky guess?--
I pity you.--I thought you cleverer--for, depend upon it a lucky
guess is never merely luck. There is always some talent in it.
And as to my poor word `success,' which you quarrel with, I do not
know that I am so entirely without any claim to it. You have drawn
two pretty pictures; but I think there may be a third--a something
between the do-nothing and the do-all. If I had not promoted Mr. Weston's
visits here, and given many little encouragements, and smoothed
many little matters, it might not have come to any thing after all.
I think you must know Hartfield enough to comprehend that."

"A straightforward, open-hearted man like Weston, and a rational,
unaffected woman like Miss Taylor, may be safely left to manage their
own concerns. You are more likely to have done harm to yourself,
than good to them, by interference."

"Emma never thinks of herself, if she can do good to others,"
rejoined Mr. Woodhouse, understanding but in part. "But, my dear,
pray do not make any more matches; they are silly things, and break up
one's family circle grievously."

"Only one more, papa; only for Mr. Elton. Poor Mr. Elton! You
like Mr. Elton, papa,--I must look about for a wife for him.
There is nobody in Highbury who deserves him--and he has been
here a whole year, and has fitted up his house so comfortably,
that it would be a shame to have him single any longer--and I thought
when he was joining their hands to-day, he looked so very much as if
he would like to have the same kind office done for him! I think
very well of Mr. Elton, and this is the only way I have of doing
him a service."

"Mr. Elton is a very pretty young man, to be sure, and a very
good young man, and I have a great regard for him. But if you
want to shew him any attention, my dear, ask him to come
and dine with us some day. That will be a much better thing.
I dare say Mr. Knightley will be so kind as to meet him."

"With a great deal of pleasure, sir, at any time," said Mr. Knightley,
laughing, "and I agree with you entirely, that it will be a much
better thing. Invite him to dinner, Emma, and help him to the best
of the fish and the chicken, but leave him to chuse his own wife.
Depend upon it, a man of six or seven-and-twenty can take care
of himself."



CHAPTER II


Mr. Weston was a native of Highbury, and born of a respectable family,

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