substitute for a meal, they next bent their steps instinctively to where
the music was playing.




5.


A few score yards brought them to the spot where the town band was now
shaking the window-panes with the strains of "The Roast Beef of Old
England."

The building before whose doors they had pitched their music-stands was
the chief hotel in Casterbridge--namely, the King's Arms. A spacious
bow-window projected into the street over the main portico, and from the
open sashes came the babble of voices, the jingle of glasses, and the
drawing of corks. The blinds, moreover, being left unclosed, the whole
interior of this room could be surveyed from the top of a flight of
stone steps to the road-waggon office opposite, for which reason a knot
of idlers had gathered there.

"We might, perhaps, after all, make a few inquiries about--our
relation Mr. Henchard," whispered Mrs. Newson who, since her entry
into Casterbridge, had seemed strangely weak and agitated, "And this, I
think, would be a good place for trying it--just to ask, you know,
how he stands in the town--if he is here, as I think he must be. You,
Elizabeth-Jane, had better be the one to do it. I'm too worn out to do
anything--pull down your fall first."