ws as soon as I
am carried out, and make it as cheerful as you can for Elizabeth-Jane.'"

"Ah, poor heart!"

"Well, and Martha did it, and buried the ounce pennies in the garden.
But if ye'll believe words, that man, Christopher Coney, went and dug
'em up, and spent 'em at the Three Mariners. 'Faith,' he said, 'why
should death rob life o' fourpence? Death's not of such good report that
we should respect 'en to that extent,' says he."

"'Twas a cannibal deed!" deprecated her listeners.

"Gad, then I won't quite ha'e it," said Solomon Longways. "I say it
to-day, and 'tis a Sunday morning, and I wouldn't speak wrongfully for
a zilver zixpence at such a time. I don't see noo harm in it. To respect
the dead is sound doxology; and I wouldn't sell skellintons--leastwise
respectable skellintons--to be varnished for 'natomies, except I were
out o' work. But money is scarce, and throats get dry. Why SHOULD death
rob life o' fourpence? I say there was no treason in it."

"Well, poor soul; she's helpless to hinder that or anything now,"
answered Mother Cuxsom. "And all her shining keys will be took from her,
and her cupboards opened; and little things a' didn't wish seen, anybody
will see; and her wishes and ways will all be as nothing!"

19.

Henchard and Elizabeth sat conversing by the fire. It was three weeks
after Mrs. Henchard's funeral, the candles were not lighted, and a
restless, acrobatic flame, poised on a coal, called from the shady walls
the smiles of all shapes that could respond--the old pier-glass, with
gilt columns and huge entablature, the picture-frames, sundry knobs and
handles, and the brass rosette at the bottom of each riband bell-pull on
either side of the chimney-piece.

"Elizabeth, do you think much of old times?" said Henchard.

"Yes, sir; often," she said.

"Who do you put in your pictures of 'em?"

"Mother and father--nobody else hardly."

Henchard always looked like one bent on resisting pain when
Elizabeth-Jane spoke of Richard Newson as "father." "Ah! I am out of all
that, am I not?" he said.... "Was Newson a kind father?"

"Yes, sir; very."

Henchard's face settled into an expression of stolid loneliness which
gradually modulated into something softer. "Suppose I had been your real
father?" he said. "Would you have cared for me as much as you cared for
Richard Newson?"

"I can't think it," she said quickly. "I can think of no other as my
father, except my father."

Hench