this before.—But you must be a real stranger here not to know what’s made all the poor volks’ insides plim like blowed bladders this week?” 

 “I am,” said Elizabeth’s mother shyly. 

 Not wishing to be observed further till she knew more of her future in this place, she withdrew with her daughter from the speaker’s side. Getting a couple of biscuits at the shop indicated as a temporary substitute for a meal, they next bent their steps instinctively to where the music was playing. 

 

V.

 A few score yards brought them to the spot where the town band was now shaking the window-panes with the strains of “The Roast Beef of Old England.” 

 The building before whose doors they had pitched their music-stands was the chief hotel in Casterbridge—namely, the King’s Arms. A spacious bow-window projected into the street over the main portico, and from the open sashes came the babble of voices, the jingle of glasses, and the drawing of corks. The blinds, moreover, being left unclosed, the whole interior of this room could be surveyed from the top of a flight of stone steps to the road-waggon office opposite, for which reason a knot of idlers had gathered there. 

 “We might, perhaps, after all, make a few inquiries about—our relation Mr. Henchard,” whispered Mrs. Newson who, since her entry into Casterbridge, had seemed strangely weak and agitated, “And this, I think, would be a good place for trying it—just to ask, you know, how he stands in the town—if he is here, as I think he must be. You, Elizabeth-Jane, had better be the one to do it. I’m too worn out to do anything—pull down your fall first.” 

 She sat down upon the lowest step, and Elizabeth-Jane obeyed her directions and stood among the idlers. 

 “What’s going on to-night?” asked the girl, after singling out an old man and standing by him long enough to acquire a neighbourly right of converse. 

 “Well, ye must be a stranger sure,” said the old man, without taking his eyes from the window. “Why, ’tis a great public dinner of the gentle-people and such like leading volk—wi’ the Mayor in the chair. As we plainer fellows bain’t invited, they leave the winder-shutters open that we may get jist a sense o’t out here. If you mount the steps you can see em. That’s Mr. Henchard, the Mayor, at the end of the table, a facing ye; and that’s the Council men right and left.... Ah, lots of them when 

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