“Ay—of course—to be sure,” he replied in his leonine way. “Do as you like—or rather as your mother advises ye. ’Od send—I’ve nothing to say to’t!”
Indoors she appeared with her hair divided by a parting that arched like a white rainbow from ear to ear. All in front of this line was covered with a thick encampment of curls; all behind was dressed smoothly, and drawn to a knob.
The three members of the family were sitting at breakfast one day, and Henchard was looking silently, as he often did, at this head of hair, which in colour was brown—rather light than dark. “I thought Elizabeth-Jane’s hair—didn’t you tell me that Elizabeth-Jane’s hair promised to be black when she was a baby?” he said to his wife.
She looked startled, jerked his foot warningly, and murmured, “Did I?”
As soon as Elizabeth was gone to her own room Henchard resumed. “Begad, I nearly forgot myself just now! What I meant was that the girl’s hair certainly looked as if it would be darker, when she was a baby.”
“It did; but they alter so,” replied Susan.
“Their hair gets darker, I know—but I wasn’t aware it lightened ever?”
“O yes.” And the same uneasy expression came out on her face, to which the future held the key. It passed as Henchard went on:
“Well, so much the better. Now Susan, I want to have her called Miss Henchard—not Miss Newson. Lots o’ people do it already in carelessness—it is her legal name—so it may as well be made her usual name—I don’t like t’other name at all for my own flesh and blood. I’ll advertise it in the Casterbridge paper—that’s the way they do it. She won’t object.”
“No. O no. But—”