of Mrs. Goodenough's furmity.
I knew the clergy's taste, the dandy gent's taste; I knew the town's
taste, the country's taste. I even knowed the taste of the coarse
shameless females. But Lord's my life--the world's no memory;
straightforward dealings don't bring profit--'tis the sly and the
underhand that get on in these times!"

Mrs. Newson glanced round--her daughter was still bending over the
distant stalls. "Can you call to mind," she said cautiously to the old
woman, "the sale of a wife by her husband in your tent eighteen years
ago to-day?"

The hag reflected, and half shook her head. "If it had been a big
thing I should have minded it in a moment," she said. "I can mind every
serious fight o' married parties, every murder, every manslaughter, even
every pocket-picking--leastwise large ones--that 't has been my lot to
witness. But a selling? Was it done quiet-like?"

"Well, yes. I think so."

The furmity woman half shook her head again. "And yet," she said, "I do.
At any rate, I can mind a man doing something o' the sort--a man in a
cord jacket, with a basket of tools; but, Lord bless ye, we don't gi'e
it head-room, we don't, such as that. The only reason why I can mind the
man is that he came back here to the next year's fair, and told me quite
private-like that if a woman ever asked for him I was to say he had gone
to--where?--Casterbridge--yes--to Casterbridge, said he. But, Lord's my
life, I shouldn't ha' thought of it again!"

Mrs. Newson would have rewarded the old woman as far as her small
means afforded had she not discreetly borne in mind that it was by that
unscrupulous person's liquor her husband had been degraded. She briefly
thanked her informant, and rejoined Elizabeth, who greeted her with,
"Mother, do let's get on--it was hardly respectable for you to buy
refreshments there. I see none but the lowest do."

"I have learned what I wanted, however," said her mother quietly.
"The last time our relative visited this fair he said he was living at
Casterbridge. It is a long, long way from here, and it was many years
ago that he said it, but there I think we'll go."

With this they descended out of the fair, and went onward to the
village, where they obtained a night's lodging.

4.

Henchard's wife acted for the best, but she had involved herself in
difficulties. A hundred times she had been upon the point of telling her
daughter Elizabeth-Jane the true story of her life, the tragical c