they meant to have any.

Elizabeth fetched their simple provisions, as she had fetched the
Scotchman's, and went up to the little chamber where she had left her
mother, noiselessly pushing open the door with the edge of the tray. To
her surprise her mother, instead of being reclined on the bed where she
had left her was in an erect position, with lips parted. At Elizabeth's
entry she lifted her finger.

The meaning of this was soon apparent. The room allotted to the two
women had at one time served as a dressing-room to the Scotchman's
chamber, as was evidenced by signs of a door of communication between
them--now screwed up and pasted over with the wall paper. But, as is
frequently the case with hotels of far higher pretensions than the Three
Mariners, every word spoken in either of these rooms was distinctly
audible in the other. Such sounds came through now.

Thus silently conjured Elizabeth deposited the tray, and her mother
whispered as she drew near, "'Tis he."

"Who?" said the girl.

"The Mayor."

The tremors in Susan Henchard's tone might have led any person but one
so perfectly unsuspicious of the truth as the girl was, to surmise
some closer connection than the admitted simple kinship as a means of
accounting for them.

Two men were indeed talking in the adjoining chamber, the young
Scotchman and Henchard, who, having entered the inn while Elizabeth-Jane
was in the kitchen waiting for the supper, had been deferentially
conducted upstairs by host Stannidge himself. The girl noiselessly laid
out their little meal, and beckoned to her mother to join her, which
Mrs. Henchard mechanically did, her attention being fixed on the
conversation through the door.

"I merely strolled in on my way home to ask you a question about
something that has excited my curiosity," said the Mayor, with careless
geniality. "But I see you have not finished supper."

"Ay, but I will be done in a little! Ye needn't go, sir. Take a seat.
I've almost done, and it makes no difference at all."

Henchard seemed to take the seat offered, and in a moment he resumed:
"Well, first I should ask, did you write this?" A rustling of paper
followed.

"Yes, I did," said the Scotchman.

"Then," said Henchard, "I am under the impression that we have met by
accident while waiting for the morning to keep an appointment with each
other? My name is Henchard, ha'n't you replied to an advertisement for a
corn-factor's manager that I put into th