“Very true, my love, very true. Exactly so, indeed⁠—quite unheard of⁠—but some ladies say anything. Better pass it off as a joke. Everybody knows what is due to you .”

“It will not do,” whispered Frank to Emma; “they are most of them affronted. I will attack them with more address. Ladies and gentlemen⁠—I am ordered by Miss Woodhouse to say, that she waives her right of knowing exactly what you may all be thinking of, and only requires something very entertaining from each of you, in a general way. Here are seven of you, besides myself, (who, she is pleased to say, am very entertaining already,) and she only demands from each of you either one thing very clever, be it prose or verse, original or repeated⁠—or two things moderately clever⁠—or three things very dull indeed, and she engages to laugh heartily at them all.”