“Oh, what a sweet house!⁠—How very beautiful!⁠—There are the yellow curtains that Miss Nash admires so much.”

“I do not often walk this way now ,” said Emma, as they proceeded, “but then there will be an inducement, and I shall gradually get intimately acquainted with all the hedges, gates, pools and pollards of this part of Highbury.”

Harriet, she found, had never in her life been inside the Vicarage, and her curiosity to see it was so extreme, that, considering exteriors and probabilities, Emma could only class it, as a proof of love, with Mr. Elton’s seeing ready wit in her.

“I wish we could contrive it,” said she; “but I cannot think of any tolerable pretence for going in;⁠—no servant that I want to inquire about of his housekeeper⁠—no message from my father.”