he said, peremptorily. "Surely, if she's
willing, you must wish it as much as I?"

"O yes--if she agrees let us do it by all means," she replied.

Then Mrs. Henchard acted somewhat inconsistently; it might have been
called falsely, but that her manner was emotional and full of the
earnestness of one who wishes to do right at great hazard. She went to
Elizabeth-Jane, whom she found sewing in her own sitting-room upstairs,
and told her what had been proposed about her surname. "Can you
agree--is it not a slight upon Newson--now he's dead and gone?"

Elizabeth reflected. "I'll think of it, mother," she answered.

When, later in the day, she saw Henchard, she adverted to the matter
at once, in a way which showed that the line of feeling started by her
mother had been persevered in. "Do you wish this change so very much,
sir?" she asked.

"Wish it? Why, my blessed fathers, what an ado you women make about
a trifle! I proposed it--that's all. Now, 'Lizabeth-Jane, just please
yourself. Curse me if I care what you do. Now, you understand, don't 'ee
go agreeing to it to please me."

Here the subject dropped, and nothing more was said, and nothing was
done, and Elizabeth still passed as Miss Newson, and not by her legal
name.

Meanwhile the great corn and hay traffic conducted by Henchard throve
under the management of Donald Farfrae as it had never thriven before.
It had formerly moved in jolts; now it went on oiled casters. The old
crude viva voce system of Henchard, in which everything depended upon
his memory, and bargains were made by the tongue alone, was swept
away. Letters and ledgers took the place of "I'll do't," and "you shall
hae't"; and, as in all such cases of advance, the rugged picturesqueness
of the old method disappeared with its inconveniences.

The position of Elizabeth-Jane's room--rather high in the house, so
that it commanded a view of the hay-stores and granaries across the
garden--afforded her opportunity for accurate observation of what went
on there. She saw that Donald and Mr. Henchard were inseparables. When
walking together Henchard would lay his arm familiarly on his manager's
shoulder, as if Farfrae were a younger brother, bearing so heavily that
his slight frame bent under the weight. Occasionally she would hear
a perfect cannonade of laughter from Henchard, arising from something
Donald had said, the latter looking quite innocent and not laughing at
all. In Henchard's somewhat lonely li