Emma

and Harriet not much otherwise, Emma would not interfere with. She had
an unhappy state of health in general for the child of such a man, for
she hardly knew what indisposition was; and if he did not invent
illnesses for her, she could make no figure in a message.

The gipsies did not wait for the operations of justice; they took
themselves off in a hurry. The young ladies of Highbury might have
walked again in safety before their panic began, and the whole history
dwindled soon into a matter of little importance but to Emma and her
nephews:—in her imagination it maintained its ground, and Henry and
John were still asking every day for the story of Harriet and the
gipsies, and still tenaciously setting her right if she varied in the
slightest particular from the original recital.




CHAPTER IV


A very few days had passed after this adventure, when Harriet came one
morning to Emma with a small parcel in her hand, and after sitting down
and hesitating, thus began:

“Miss Woodhouse—if you are at leisure—I have something that I should
like to tell you—a sort of confession to make—and then, you know, it
will be over.”

Emma was a good deal surprized; but begged her to speak. There was a