she now called herself,
keenly eyeing something under a green bank a little way off. "See
there."

The daughter looked in the direction signified. The object pointed
out was a tripod of sticks stuck into the earth, from which hung a
three-legged crock, kept hot by a smouldering wood fire beneath. Over
the pot stooped an old woman haggard, wrinkled, and almost in rags. She
stirred the contents of the pot with a large spoon, and occasionally
croaked in a broken voice, "Good furmity sold here!"

It was indeed the former mistress of the furmity tent--once thriving,
cleanly, white-aproned, and chinking with money--now tentless, dirty,
owning no tables or benches, and having scarce any customers except
two small whity-brown boys, who came up and asked for "A ha'p'orth,
please--good measure," which she served in a couple of chipped yellow
basins of commonest clay.

"She was here at that time," resumed Mrs. Newson, making a step as if to
draw nearer.

"Don't speak to her--it isn't respectable!" urged the other.

"I will just say a word--you, Elizabeth-Jane, can stay here."

The girl was not loth, and turned to some stalls of coloured prints
while her mother went forward. The old woman begged for the latter's
custom as soon as she saw her, and responded to Mrs. Henchard-Newson's
request for a pennyworth with more alacrity than she had shown in
selling six-pennyworths in her younger days. When the soi-disant widow
had taken the basin of thin poor slop that stood for the rich concoction
of the former time, the hag opened a little basket behind the fire, and
looking up slily, whispered, "Just a thought o' rum in it?--smuggled,
you know--say two penn'orth--'twill make it slip down like cordial!"

Her customer smiled bitterly at this survival of the old trick, and
shook her head with a meaning the old woman was far from translating.
She pretended to eat a little of the furmity with the leaden spoon
offered, and as she did so said blandly to the hag, "You've seen better
days?"

"Ah, ma'am--well ye may say it!" responded the old woman, opening the
sluices of her heart forthwith. "I've stood in this fair-ground, maid,
wife, and widow, these nine-and-thirty years, and in that time have
known what it was to do business with the richest stomachs in the
land! Ma'am you'd hardly believe that I was once the owner of a great
pavilion-tent that was the attraction of the fair. Nobody could come,
nobody could go, without having a dish