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"

"My dear Isabella,"--exclaimed he hastily--"pray do not concern
yourself 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 his eyes on
her with tender concern.--The ejaculation in Emma's ear expressed,
"Ah! there is no end of the sad consequences of your going to
South End. It does not bear talking of." And for a little while
she hoped he would not talk of it, and that a silent rumination
might suffice to restore him to the relish of his own smooth gruel.
After an interval of some minutes, however, he began with,

"I shall always be very sorry that you went to the sea this autumn,

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