"

Embarrassed glances were exchanged by the Council and Grower nearly
ate the end of his quill-pen off, so gnawed he it during the silence.
Farfrae the young Mayor, who by virtue of his office sat in the large
chair, intuitively caught the sense of the meeting, and as spokesman
was obliged to utter it, glad as he would have been that the duty should
have fallen to another tongue.

"I hardly see that it would be proper, Mr. Henchard," said he. "The
Council are the Council, and as ye are no longer one of the body, there
would be an irregularity in the proceeding. If ye were included, why not
others?"

"I have a particular reason for wishing to assist at the ceremony."

Farfrae looked round. "I think I have expressed the feeling of the
Council," he said.

"Yes, yes," from Dr. Bath, Lawyer Long, Alderman Tubber, and several
more.

"Then I am not to be allowed to have anything to do with it officially?"

"I am afraid so; it is out of the question, indeed. But of course you
can see the doings full well, such as they are to be, like the rest of
the spectators."

Henchard did not reply to that very obvious suggestion, and, turning on
his heel, went away.

It had been only a passing fancy of his, but opposition crystallized
it into a determination. "I'll welcome his Royal Highness, or nobody
shall!" he went about saying. "I am not going to be sat upon by Farfrae,
or any of the rest of the paltry crew! You shall see."

The eventful morning was bright, a full-faced sun confronting early
window-gazers eastward, and all perceived (for they were practised in
weather-lore) that there was permanence in the glow. Visitors soon began
to flock in from county houses, villages, remote copses, and lonely
uplands, the latter in oiled boots and tilt bonnets, to see the
reception, or if not to see it, at any rate to be near it. There was
hardly a workman in the town who did not put a clean shirt on. Solomon
Longways, Christopher Coney, Buzzford, and the rest of that fraternity,
showed their sense of the occasion by advancing their customary eleven
o'clock pint to half-past ten; from which they found a difficulty in
getting back to the proper hour for several days.

Henchard had determined to do no work that day. He primed himself in
the morning with a glass of rum, and walking down the street met
Elizabeth-Jane, whom he had not seen for a week. "It was lucky," he
said to her, "my twenty-one years had expired before this came on,