“Yes, ma’am.”
“Carry with you some evergreens and flowers to put upon her coffin—indeed, gather a great many, and completely bury her in them. Get some boughs of laurustinus, and variegated box, and yew, and boy’s-love; ay, and some bunches of chrysanthemum. And let old Pleasant draw her, because she knew him so well.”
“I will, ma’am. I ought to have said that the Union, in the form of four labouring men, will meet me when I gets to our churchyard gate, and take her and bury her according to the rites of the Board of Guardians, as by law ordained.”
“Dear me—Casterbridge Union—and is Fanny come to this?” said Bathsheba, musing. “I wish I had known of it sooner. I thought she was far away. How long has she lived there?”
“On’y been there a day or two.”
“Oh!—then she has not been staying there as a regular inmate?”
“No. She first went to live in a garrison-town t’other side o’ Wessex, and since then she’s been picking up a living at seampstering in Melchester for several months, at the house of a very respectable widow-woman who takes in work of that sort. She only got handy the Union-house on Sunday morning ’a b’lieve, and ’tis supposed here and there that she had traipsed every step of the way from Melchester. Why she left her place, I can’t say, for I don’t know; and as to a lie, why, I wouldn’t tell it. That’s the short of the story, ma’am.”
“Ah-h!”
No gem ever flashed from a rosy ray to a white one more rapidly than changed the young wife’s countenance whilst this word came from her in a long-drawn breath. “Did she walk along our turnpike-road?” she said, in a suddenly restless and eager voice.
“I believe she did.... Ma’am, shall I call Liddy? You bain’t well, ma’am, surely? You look like a lily—so pale and fainty!”