Coney looked at him.  “Not the skimmity-ride?”

Buzzford nodded.

“I have my doubts if it will be carried out,” said Longways.  “If they are getting it up they are keeping it mighty close.

“I heard they were thinking of it a fortnight ago, at all events.”

“If I were sure o’t I’d lay information,” said Longways emphatically.  “’Tis too rough a joke, and apt to wake riots in towns.  We know that the Scotchman is a right enough man, and that his lady has been a right enough ’oman since she came here, and if there was anything wrong about her afore, that’s their business, not ours.”

Coney reflected.  Farfrae was still liked in the community; but it must be owned that, as the Mayor and man of money, engrossed with affairs and ambitions, he had lost in the eyes of the poorer inhabitants something of that wondrous charm which he had had for them as a light-hearted penniless young man, who sang ditties as readily as the birds in the trees.  Hence the anxiety to keep him from annoyance showed not quite the ardour that would have animated it in former days.

“Suppose we make inquiration into it, Christopher,” continued Longways; “and if we find there’s really anything in it, drop a letter to them most concerned, and advise ’em to keep out of the way?”

This course was decided on, and the group separated, Buzzford saying to Coney, “Come, my ancient friend; let’s move on.  There’s nothing more to see here.”

These well-intentioned ones would have been surprised had they known how ripe the great jocular plot really was.  “Yes, to-night,” Jopp had said to the Peter’s party at the corner of Mixen Lane.  “As a wind-up to the Royal visit the hit will be all the more pat by reason of their great elevation to-day.”

To him, at least, it was not a joke, but a retaliation.

38.

The proceedings had been brief—­too brief—­to Lucetta whom an intoxicating Weltlust had fairly mastered; but they had brought her a great triumph nevertheless.  The shake of the Royal hand still lingered in her fingers; and the chit-chat she had overheard, that her husband might possibly receive the honour of knighthood, though idle to a degree, seemed not the wildest vision; stranger things had occurred to men so good and captivating as her Scotchman was.

After the collision with the Mayor, Henchard had withdrawn behind the ladies’ stand; and there he stood, regarding with a stare of abstraction the spot on the lapel of his coat where Farfrae’s hand had seized it.  He put his own hand there, as if he could hardly realize such an outrage from one whom it had once been his wont to treat with ardent generosity.  While pausing in this half-stupefied state the conversation of Lucetta with the other ladies reached his ears; and he distinctly heard her deny him—­deny that he had assisted Donald, that he was anything more than a common journeyman.

He moved on homeward, and met Jopp in the archway to the Bull Stake.  “So you’ve had a snub,” said Jopp.