or I
should never have had the nerve to carry it out."

"Carry out what?" said she, alarmed.

"This welcome I am going to give our Royal visitor."

She was perplexed. "Shall we go and see it together?" she said.

"See it! I have other fish to fry. You see it. It will be worth seeing!"

She could do nothing to elucidate this, and decked herself out with a
heavy heart. As the appointed time drew near she got sight again of her
stepfather. She thought he was going to the Three Mariners; but no,
he elbowed his way through the gay throng to the shop of Woolfrey, the
draper. She waited in the crowd without.

In a few minutes he emerged, wearing, to her surprise, a brilliant
rosette, while more surprising still, in his hand he carried a flag of
somewhat homely construction, formed by tacking one of the small
Union Jacks, which abounded in the town to-day, to the end of a deal
wand--probably the roller from a piece of calico. Henchard rolled up his
flag on the doorstep, put it under his arm, and went down the street.

Suddenly the taller members of the crowd turned their heads, and the
shorter stood on tiptoe. It was said that the Royal cortege approached.
The railway had stretched out an arm towards Casterbridge at this time,
but had not reached it by several miles as yet; so that the intervening
distance, as well as the remainder of the journey, was to be traversed
by road in the old fashion. People thus waited--the county families
in their carriages, the masses on foot--and watched the far-stretching
London highway to the ringing of bells and chatter of tongues.

From the background Elizabeth-Jane watched the scene. Some seats had
been arranged from which ladies could witness the spectacle, and the
front seat was occupied by Lucetta, the Mayor's wife, just at present.
In the road under her eyes stood Henchard. She appeared so bright and
pretty that, as it seemed, he was experiencing the momentary weakness of
wishing for her notice. But he was far from attractive to a woman's eye,
ruled as that is so largely by the superficies of things. He was not
only a journeyman, unable to appear as he formerly had appeared, but he
disdained to appear as well as he might. Everybody else, from the
Mayor to the washerwoman, shone in new vesture according to means; but
Henchard had doggedly retained the fretted and weather-beaten garments
of bygone years.

Hence, alas, this occurred: Lucetta's eyes slid over him to this side
and to