"Now--to change the subject--one
good turn deserves another; don't stay to finish that miserable supper.
Come to my house, I can find something better for 'ee than cold ham and
ale."
Donald Farfrae was grateful--said he feared he must decline--that he
wished to leave early next day.
"Very well," said Henchard quickly, "please yourself. But I tell you,
young man, if this holds good for the bulk, as it has done for the
sample, you have saved my credit, stranger though you be. What shall I
pay you for this knowledge?"
"Nothing at all, nothing at all. It may not prove necessary to ye to use
it often, and I don't value it at all. I thought I might just as well
let ye know, as you were in a difficulty, and they were harrd upon ye."
Henchard paused. "I shan't soon forget this," he said. "And from a
stranger!... I couldn't believe you were not the man I had engaged! Says
I to myself, 'He knows who I am, and recommends himself by this stroke.'
And yet it turns out, after all, that you are not the man who answered
my advertisement, but a stranger!"
"Ay, ay; that's so," said the young man.
Henchard again suspended his words, and then his voice came
thoughtfully: "Your forehead, Farfrae, is something like my poor
brother's--now dead and gone; and the nose, too, isn't unlike his. You
must be, what--five foot nine, I reckon? I am six foot one and a half
out of my shoes.
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