Poor little Harriet, who is really as guileless and kind-hearted as she is simple and silly, is at first much and favourably impressed.
But Emma’s influence, though she does not mean to exercise it unduly, causes Harriet, not without lingering regret, to resolve to decline the offer.
“I could not have visited Mrs. Robert Martin, of Abbey Mill Farm,” says Emma, and Harriet is fixed in her resolve.
“That would have been too dreadful, dear Miss Woodhouse. I would not give up the pleasure and honour of being acquainted with you, for anything in the world.”
Mr. Knightley comes in a happy mood to Hartfield, to tell Emma something that will please her about her little friend, Harriet Smith. Though he has condemned the friendship, he can appreciate Harriet’s girlish good qualities; he is even magnanimous enough to compliment Emma on having cured her companion of her school-girl giggle. Robert Martin has confided his attachment to his friend and landlord, who is eager to inform Emma that Harriet Smith will soon have an offer of marriage from a most unexceptionable quarter—Robert Martin is the man. Her visit to Abbey Mill in the summer has done his business, and he means to marry her.
“He is very obliging,” said the well-informed Emma; “but is he sure that Harriet means to marry him?”
“Well, well—means to make her an offer, then; will that do?” Mr. Knightley, “who had nothing of ceremony about him,” conceives that Emma is speaking from some scruple of womanly dignity as to his mode of expressing himself. He enlarges on the advantages of the marriage, and his satisfaction with it. He ends with the laughing supposition that Martin may be detaining Harriet in Highbury at that very moment, and she may not be thinking him one of those “tiresome wretches”—as Emma has just styled the Highbury gossips.
“Pray, Mr. Knightley,” said Emma, who has been smiling to herself, “how do you know that Mr. Martin did not speak yesterday?”
Certainly he did not absolutely know, but he had understood Harriet Smith was with her all that day.
“Come,” said she, “I will tell you something in return for what you have told me. He did speak yesterday; that is, he wrote, and was refused.”