 rugged
picturesqueness of the old method disappeared with its inconveniences.
    The position of Elizabeth-Jane's room - rather high in the house, so that it
commanded a view of the haystores and granaries across the garden - afforded her
opportunity for accurate observation of what went on there. She saw that Donald
and Mr. Henchard were inseparables. When walking together Henchard would lay his
arm familiarly on his manager's shoulder, as if Farfrae were a younger brother,
bearing so heavily that his slight figure bent under the weight. Occasionally
she would hear a perfect cannonade of laughter from Henchard, arising from
something Donald had said, the latter looking quite innocent and not laughing at
all. In Henchard's somewhat lonely life he evidently found the young man as
desirable for comradeship as he was useful for consultations. Donald's
brightness of intellect maintained in the corn-factor the admiration it had won
at the first hour of their meeting. The poor opinion, and but ill-concealed,
that he entertained of the slim Farfrae's physical girth, strength, and dash was
more than counterbalanced by the immense respect he had for his brains.
    Her quiet eye discerned that Henchard's tigerish affection for the younger
man, his constant liking to have Farfrae near him, now and then resulted in a
tendency to domineer, which, however, was checked in a moment when Donald
exhibited marks of real offence. One day, looking down on their figures from on
high, she heard the latter remark, as they stood in the doorway between the
garden and yard, that their habit of walking and driving about together rather
neutralized Farfrae's value as a second pair of eyes, which should be used in
places where the principal was not. »'Od damn it,« cried Henchard, »what's all
the world! I like a fellow to talk to. Now come along and hae some supper, and
don't take too much thought about things, or ye'll drive me crazy.«
    When she walked with her mother, on the other hand, she often beheld the
Scotchman looking at them with a curious interest. The fact that he had met her
at the Three Mariners was insufficient to account for it, since on the occasions
on which she had entered his room he had never raised his eyes. Besides, it was
at her mother more particularly than at herself that he looked, to
Elizabeth-Jane's half-conscious, simple-minded, perhaps pardonable,
disappointment. Thus she could not account for this interest by her own
attractiveness, and she
