“He was.”
“I suppose he never knew me?” the girl innocently continued.
Mrs. Henchard paused for a moment, and answered uneasily, “Of course not, Elizabeth-Jane. But come this way.” She moved on to another part of the field.
“It is not much use inquiring here for anybody, I should think,” the daughter observed, as she gazed round about. “People at fairs change like the leaves of trees; and I daresay you are the only one here to-day who was here all those years ago.”
“I am not so sure of that,” said Mrs. Newson, as she now called herself, keenly eyeing something under a green bank a little way off. “See there.”
The daughter looked in the direction signified. The object pointed out was a tripod of sticks stuck into the earth, from which hung a three-legged crock, kept hot by a smouldering wood fire beneath. Over the pot stooped an old woman haggard, wrinkled, and almost in rags. She stirred the contents of the pot with a large spoon, and occasionally croaked in a broken voice, “Good furmity sold here!”
It was indeed the former mistress of the furmity tent—once thriving, cleanly, white-aproned, and chinking with money—now tentless, dirty, owning no tables or benches, and having scarce any customers except two small whity-brown boys, who came up and asked for “A ha’p’orth, please—good measure,” which she served in a couple of chipped yellow basins of commonest clay.
“She was here at that time,” resumed Mrs. Newson, making a step as if to draw nearer.
“Don’t speak to her—it isn’t respectable!” urged the other.
“I will just say a word—you, Elizabeth-Jane, can stay here.”