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of the present day, a note was brought from Mrs. Goddard, requesting,
in most respectful terms, to be allowed to bring Miss Smith with her;
a most welcome request: for Miss Smith was a girl of seventeen,
whom Emma knew very well by sight, and had long felt an interest in,
on account of her beauty. A very gracious invitation was returned,
and the evening no longer dreaded by the fair mistress of the mansion.

Harriet Smith was the natural daughter of somebody. Somebody had
placed her, several years back, at Mrs. Goddard's school,
and somebody had lately raised her from the condition of scholar
to that of parlour-boarder. This was all that was generally known
of her history. She had no visible friends but what had been
acquired at Highbury, and was now just returned from a long visit
in the country to some young ladies who had been at school there with her.

She was a very pretty girl, and her beauty happened to be of a sort
which Emma particularly admired. She was short, plump, and fair,
with a fine bloom, blue eyes, light hair, regular features,
and a look of great sweetness, and, before the end of the evening,
Emma was as much pleased with her manners as her person, and quite
determined to continue the acquaintance.

She was not struck by any thing remarkably clever in Miss Smith's
conversation, but she found her altogether very engaging--not
inconveniently shy, not unwilling to talk--and yet so far from pushing,
shewing so proper and becoming a deference, seeming so pleasantly
grateful for being admitted to Hartfield, and so artlessly
impressed by the appearance of every thing in so superior a style
to what she had been used to, that she must have good sense,
and deserve encouragement. Encouragement should be given.
Those soft blue eyes, and all those natural graces, should not be
wasted on the inferior society of Highbury and its connexions.
The acquaintance she had already formed were unworthy of her.
The friends from whom she had just parted, though very good sort
of people, must be doing her harm. They were a family of the name
of Martin, whom Emma well knew by character, as renting a large farm
of Mr. Knightley, and residing in the parish of Donwell--very creditably,
she believed--she knew Mr. Knightley thought highly of them--but they
must be coarse and unpolished, and very unfit to be the intimates
of a girl who wanted only a little more knowledge and elegance
to be quite perfect. _She_ would notice her; she would improve her;
she would detach her from her bad acquaintance, and introduce her
into good society; she would form her opinions and her manners.
It would be an interesting, and certainly a very kind undertaking;
highly becoming her own situation in life, her leisure, and powers.

She was so busy in admiring those soft blue eyes, in talking
and listening, and forming all these schemes in the in-betweens, that
the evening flew away at a very unusual rate; and the supper-table,
which always closed such parties, and for which she had been

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