And woman, lovely woman, reigns alone.
“Thy ready wit the word will soon supply,
May its approval beam in that soft eye!”
Emma reads, ponders, catches the meaning “courtship,” and happily confident that Mr. Elton, is coming to the point, hands the paper to Harriet.
“‘That soft eye’ can only refer to Harriet,” thinks Emma. “‘Thy ready wit.’ Humph! Harriet’s ready wit! All the better. A man must be very much in love to describe her so.”
Harriet’s ready wit exhibits itself in not having an idea of the answer. Can it be “Woman,” or “Neptune,” or “Trident?”
Emma is slightly exasperated; but she takes pains to explain the riddle in detail, and to draw the strongest inferences from its subject, while Harriet beams and blushes with joy and confusion.
Emma now becomes as assiduous as ever Mrs. Bennet, of Longbourn House, showed herself with regard to her daughter, Jane, and her lover Bingley, in making opportunities for Mr. Elton to propose to Harriet Smith.
But lovers are perverse, and will not always avail themselves of the best-planned assistance.
In the course of a walk which Emma and Harriet chance to take past the vicarage, in which the girls are overtaken by the vicar, Emma, having discovered that Harriet had never been inside the house, perpetrates a ruse to enable her friend to see her future home. Emma contrives to break her boot-lace, then announces the accident, and asks Mr. Elton to allow her to go into the vicarage and get a bit of riband or string from his housekeeper to keep the boot on.