'Come, dear Emma, let us be friends'

I adore this version of Emma, and yes, I can tell the difference between the novel and an adaptation, but one scene always bothers me, simply because there is a line or two of necessary dialogue missing which upsets the balance of the argument between Mr Knightley and Emma. The conversation between them, when they are nursing baby Emma together, runs this way in the book:

"What a comfort it is, that we think alike about our nephews and nieces. As to men and women, our opinions are sometimes very different; but with regard to these children, I observe we never disagree."

"If you were as much guided by nature in your estimate of men and women, and as little under the power of fancy and whim in your dealings with them, as you are where these children are concerned, we might always think alike."

"To be sure--our discordancies must always arise from my being in the wrong."

"Yes," said he, smiling--"and reason good. I was sixteen years old when you were born."

"A material difference then," she replied--"and no doubt you were much my superior in judgment at that period of our lives; but does not the lapse of one-and-twenty years bring our understandings a good deal nearer?"

"Yes--a good deal nearer."

"But still, not near enough to give me a chance of being right, if we think differently."

"I have still the advantage of you by sixteen years' experience, and by not being a pretty young woman and a spoiled child. Come, my dear Emma, let us be friends, and say no more about it. Tell your aunt, little Emma, that she ought to set you a better example than to be renewing old grievances, and that if she were not wrong before, she is now."

"That's true," she cried--"very true. Little Emma, grow up a better woman than your aunt."

Once again, Sandy Welch's script fits in the spirit of the text, if not all of the actual wording, but the missing lines in bold above change Knightley's 'pretty young woman and a spoiled child' response from a rebuttal into what sounds like a direct attack, and then he asks to be friends! I know fans were put out by the missing 'Brother and sister - no, indeed!' line, which I can live without, but the dialogue in this scene sounds completely disjointed. Did anyone else notice the gap, or is it just me?

Or are there any other scenes that suffer by deviating from Austen's clever writing? Don't get me wrong, I think Sandy Welch did a fantastic job, and she also added some fitting dialogue of her own, but I do miss some lines.



"Tony, if you talk that rubbish, I shall be forced to punch your head" - Lord Tony's Wife, Orczy