It was three weeks
after Mrs. Henchard's funeral, the candles were not lighted, and a
restless, acrobatic flame, poised on a coal, called from the shady walls
the smiles of all shapes that could respond--the old pier-glass, with
gilt columns and huge entablature, the picture-frames, sundry knobs and
handles, and the brass rosette at the bottom of each riband bell-pull on
either side of the chimney-piece.
"Elizabeth, do you think much of old times?" said Henchard.
"Yes, sir; often," she said.
"Who do you put in your pictures of 'em?"
"Mother and father--nobody else hardly."
Henchard always looked like one bent on resisting pain when
Elizabeth-Jane spoke of Richard Newson as "father." "Ah! I am out of all
that, am I not?" he said.... "Was Newson a kind father?"
"Yes, sir; very."
Henchard's face settled into an expression of stolid loneliness which
gradually modulated into something softer. "Suppose I had been your real
father?" he said. "Would you have cared for me as much as you cared for
Richard Newson?"
"I can't think it," she said quickly. "I can think of no other as my
father, except my father."
Henchard's wife was dissevered from him by death; his friend and helper
Farfrae by estrangement; Elizabeth-Jane by ignorance. It seemed to him
that only one of them could possibly be recalled, and that was the girl.
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