smiling face, and in a flutter of spirits, which Miss Woodhouse
hoped very soon to compose.

"Only think of our happening to meet him!--How very odd! It was
quite a chance, he said, that he had not gone round by Randalls.
He did not think we ever walked this road. He thought we walked
towards Randalls most days. He has not been able to get the
Romance of the Forest yet. He was so busy the last time he was
at Kingston that he quite forgot it, but he goes again to-morrow.
So very odd we should happen to meet! Well, Miss Woodhouse, is he
like what you expected? What do you think of him? Do you think him
so very plain?"

"He is very plain, undoubtedly--remarkably plain:--but that is
nothing compared with his entire want of gentility. I had no
right to expect much, and I did not expect much; but I had no
idea that he could be so very clownish, so totally without air.
I had imagined him, I confess, a degree or two nearer gentility."

"To be sure," said Harriet, in a mortified voice, "he is not
so genteel as real gentlemen."

"I think, Harriet, since your acquaintance with us, you have been
repeatedly in the company of some such very real gentlemen,
that you must yourself be struck with the difference in Mr. Martin.
At Hartfield, you have had very good specimens of well educated,
well bred men. I should be surprized if, after seeing them,
you could be in company with Mr. Martin again without perceiving
him to be a very inferior creature--and rather wondering at
yourself for having ever thought him at all agreeable before.