Though it was still early the young Scotchman expressed his wish to retire, whereupon the landlady whispered to Elizabeth to run upstairs and turn down his bed.  She took a candlestick and proceeded on her mission, which was the act of a few moments only.  When, candle in hand, she reached the top of the stairs on her way down again, Mr. Farfrae was at the foot coming up.  She could not very well retreat; they met and passed in the turn of the staircase.

She must have appeared interesting in some way—­not-withstanding her plain dress—­or rather, possibly, in consequence of it, for she was a girl characterized by earnestness and soberness of mien, with which simple drapery accorded well.  Her face flushed, too, at the slight awkwardness of the meeting, and she passed him with her eyes bent on the candle-flame that she carried just below her nose.  Thus it happened that when confronting her he smiled; and then, with the manner of a temporarily light-hearted man, who has started himself on a flight of song whose momentum he cannot readily check, he softly tuned an old ditty that she seemed to suggest—­

“As I came in by my bower door,
As day was waxin’ wearie,
Oh wha came tripping down the stair
But bonnie Peg my dearie.”

Elizabeth-Jane, rather disconcerted, hastened on; and the Scotchman’s voice died away, humming more of the same within the closed door of his room.

Here the scene and sentiment ended for the present.  When soon after, the girl rejoined her mother, the latter was still in thought—­on quite another matter than a young man’s song.

“We’ve made a mistake,” she whispered (that the Scotch-man might not overhear).  “On no account ought ye to have helped serve here to-night.  Not because of ourselves, but for the sake of him.  If he should befriend us, and take us up, and then find out what you did when staying here, ’twould grieve and wound his natural pride as Mayor of the town.”

Elizabeth, who would perhaps have been more alarmed at this than her mother had she known the real relationship, was not much disturbed about it as things stood.  Her “he” was another man than her poor mother’s.  “For myself,” she said, “I didn’t at all mind waiting a little upon him.  He’s so respectable, and educated—­far above the rest of ’em in the inn.  They thought him very simple not to know their grim broad way of talking about themselves here.  But of course he didn’t know—­he was too refined in his mind to know such things!” Thus she earnestly pleaded.

Meanwhile, the “he” of her mother was not so far away as even they thought.  After leaving the Three Mariners he had sauntered up and down the empty High Street, passing and repassing the inn in his promenade.  When the Scotchman sang his voice had reached Henchard’s ears through the heart-shaped holes in the window-shutters, and had led him to pause outside them a long while.

“To be sure, to be sure, how that fellow does draw me!” he had said to himself.  “I suppose ’tis because I’m so lonely.  I’d have given him a third share in the business to have stayed!”