 be as willing to prefer Cromer to South End as he could himself.«
    »True, true,« cried Mr. Knightley, with most ready interposition - »very
true. That's a consideration indeed. - But John, as to what I was telling you of
my idea of moving the path to Langham, of turning it more to the right that it
may not cut through the home meadows, I cannot conceive any difficulty. I should
not attempt it, if it were to be the means of inconvenience to the Highbury
people, but if you call to mind exactly the present line of the path. ... The
only way of proving it, however, will be to turn to our maps. I shall see you at
the Abbey to-morrow morning I hope, and then we will look them over, and you
shall give me your opinion.«
    Mr. Woodhouse was rather agitated by such harsh reflections on his friend
Perry, to whom he had, in fact, though unconsciously, been attributing many of
his own feelings and expressions; - but the soothing attentions of his daughters
gradually removed the present evil, and the immediate alertness of one brother,
and better recollections of the other, prevented any renewal of it.
 

                                 Chapter XIII.

There could hardly be an happier creature in the world, than Mrs. John
Knightley, in this short visit to Hartfield, going about every morning among her
old acquaintance with her five children, and talking over what she had done
every evening with her father and sister. - She had nothing to wish otherwise,
but that the days did not pass so swiftly. It was a delightful visit; - perfect,
in being much too short.
    In general their evenings were less engaged with friends than their
mornings: but one complete dinner engagement, and out of the house too, there
was no avoiding, though at Christmas. Mr. Weston would take no denial; they must
all dine at Randalls one day; - even Mr. Woodhouse was persuaded to think it a
possible thing in preference to a division of the party.
    How they were all to be conveyed, he would have made a difficulty if he
could, but as his son and daughter's carriage and horses were actually at
Hartfield, he was not able to make more than a simple question on that head; it
hardly amounted to a doubt; nor did it occupy Emma long to convince him that
they might in one of the carriages find room for Harriet also.
    Harriet, Mr. Elton, and Mr. Knightley, their own especial set, were
