Chapter 9 - Page 2

he should
have wished me good-bye."

The simple thought, with its latent sense of slight, had
moulded itself out of the following little fact: when the
Scotchman came out at the door he had by accident glanced up
at her; and then he had looked away again without nodding,
or smiling, or saying a word.

"You are still thinking, mother," she said, when she turned
inwards.

"Yes; I am thinking of Mr. Henchard's sudden liking for that
young man. He was always so. Now, surely, if he takes so
warmly to people who are not related to him at all, may he
not take as warmly to his own kin?"

While they debated this question a procession of five large
waggons went past, laden with hay up to the bedroom windows.
They came in from the country, and the steaming horses had
probably been travelling a great part of the night. To the
shaft of each hung a little board, on which was painted in
white letters, "Henchard, corn-factor and hay-merchant." The
spectacle renewed his wife's conviction that, for her
daughter's sake, she should strain a point to rejoin him.

The discussion was continued during breakfast, and the end
of it was that Mrs. Henchard decided, for good or for ill,
to send Elizabeth-Jane with a message to Henchard, to the
effect that his relative Susan, a sailor's widow, was in the
town; leaving it to him to say whether or not he would
recognize her. What had brought her to this determination
were chiefly two things. He had been described as a lonely
widower; and he had expressed shame for a past transaction
of his life. There was promise in both.

"If he says no," she enjoined, as Elizabeth-Jane stood,
bonnet on, ready to depart; "if he thinks it does not become
the good position he has reached to in the town, to own--to
let us call on him as--his distant kinfolk, say, 'Then, sir,
we would rather not intrude; we will leave Casterbridge as
quietly as we have come, and go back to our own
country.'...I almost feel that I would rather he did say so,
as I have not seen him for so many years, and we are so--
little allied to him!"

"And if he say yes?" inquired the more sanguine one.

"In that case," answered Mrs. Henchard cautiously, "ask him
to write me a note, saying when and how he will see us--or ME."

Elizabeth-Jane went a few steps towards the landing. "And
tell him," continued her mother, "that I fully know I have
no claim upon him--that I am glad to find he is thriving;
that I hope his life may be long and happy--there, go." Thus
with a half-hearted willingness, a smothered reluctance, did
the poor forgiving woman start her unconscious daughter on
this errand.

It was about ten o'clock, and market-day, when Elizabeth