 »are you imagining me to be
Mr. Elton's object?«
    »Such an imagination has crossed me, I own, Emma; and if it never occurred
to you before, you may as well take it into consideration now.«
    »Mr. Elton in love with me! - What an idea!«
    »I do not say it is so; but you will do well to consider whether it is so or
not, and to regulate your behaviour accordingly. I think your manners to him
encouraging. I speak as a friend, Emma. You had better look about you, and
ascertain what you do, and what you mean to do.«
    »I thank you; but I assure you you are quite mistaken. Mr. Elton and I are
very good friends, and nothing more;« and she walked on, amusing herself in the
consideration of the blunders which often arise from a partial knowledge of
circumstances, of the mistakes which people of high pretensions to judgment are
for ever falling into; and not very well pleased with her brother for imagining
her blind and ignorant, and in want of counsel. He said no more.
    Mr. Woodhouse had so completely made up his mind to the visit, that in spite
of the increasing coldness, he seemed to have no idea of shrinking from it, and
set forward at last most punctually with his eldest daughter in his own
carriage, with less apparent consciousness of the weather than either of the
others; too full of the wonder of his own going, and the pleasure it was to
afford at Randalls to see that it was cold, and too well wrapt up to feel it.
The cold, however, was severe; and by the time the second carriage was in
motion, a few flakes of snow were finding their way down, and the sky had the
appearance of being so overcharged as to want only a milder air to produce a
very white world in a very short time.
    Emma soon saw that her companion was not in the happiest humour. The
preparing and the going abroad in such weather, with the sacrifice of his
children after dinner, were evils, were disagreeables at least, which Mr. John
Knightley did not by any means like; he anticipated nothing in the visit that
could be at all worth the purchase; and the whole of their drive to the Vicarage
was spent by him in expressing his discontent.
    »A man,« said he, »must have a very good opinion of himself when he asks
people to leave their own fireside, and encounter such a day as this,
