“Thank you, Joseph. That will do. Go on now, or you’ll be late.”
Bathsheba, still unhappy, went indoors again. In the course of the afternoon she said to Liddy, who had been informed of the occurrence, “What was the colour of poor Fanny Robin’s hair? Do you know? I cannot recollect—I only saw her for a day or two.”
“It was light, ma’am; but she wore it rather short, and packed away under her cap, so that you would hardly notice it. But I have seen her let it down when she was going to bed, and it looked beautiful then. Real golden hair.”
“Her young man was a soldier, was he not?”
“Yes. In the same regiment as Mr. Troy. He says he knew him very well.”
“What, Mr. Troy says so? How came he to say that?”
“One day I just named it to him, and asked him if he knew Fanny’s young man. He said, ‘Oh yes, he knew the young man as well as he knew himself, and that there wasn’t a man in the regiment he liked better.’”
“Ah! Said that, did he?”
“Yes; and he said there was a strong likeness between himself and the other young man, so that sometimes people mistook them—”
“Liddy, for Heaven’s sake stop your talking!” said Bathsheba, with the nervous petulance that comes from worrying perceptions.