 be the greatest
humanity in you to do as much for her as you have done for me, except falling in
love with her when she is thirteen.«
    »How often, when you were a girl, have you said to me, with one of your
saucy looks - Mr. Knightley, I am going to do so and so; papa says I may, or, I
have Miss Taylor's leave - something which, you knew, I did not approve. In such
cases my interference was giving you two bad feelings instead of one.«
    »What an amiable creature I was! - No wonder you should hold my speeches in
such affectionate remembrance.«
    »Mr. Knightley. - You always called me, Mr. Knightley; and, from habit, it
has not so very formal a sound. - And yet it is formal. I want you to call me
something else, but I do not know what.«
    »I remember once calling you George, in one of my amiable fits, about ten
years ago. I did it because I thought it would offend you; but, as you made no
objection, I never did it again.«
    »And cannot you call me George now?«
    »Impossible! - I never can call you any thing but Mr. Knightley. I will not
promise even to equal the elegant terseness of Mrs. Elton, by calling you Mr. K.
- But I will promise,« she added presently, laughing and blushing - »I will
promise to call you once by your Christian name. I do not say when, but perhaps
you may guess where; - in the building in which N. takes M. for better, for
worse.«
    Emma grieved that she could not be more openly just to one important service
which his better sense would have rendered her, to the advice which would have
saved her from the worst of all her womanly follies - her wilful intimacy with
Harriet Smith; but it was too tender a subject. - She could not enter on it. -
Harriet was very seldom mentioned between them. This, on his side, might merely
proceed from her not being thought of; but Emma was rather inclined to attribute
it to delicacy, and a suspicion, from some appearances, that their friendship
were declining. She was aware herself, that, parting under any other
circumstances, they certainly should have corresponded more, and that her
intelligence would not have rested, as it now almost wholly did, on Isabella's
letters. He might observe that it was so.
