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 paced up the
High Street, in no great hurry; for to herself her position was only
that of a poor relation deputed to hunt up a rich one. The front doors
of the private houses were mostly left open at this warm autumn time,
no thought of umbrella stealers disturbing the minds of the placid
burgesses. Hence, through the long, straight, entrance passages thus
unclosed could be seen, as through tunnels, the