orn. And there's my wages--the last I shall ever hae!"

He threw the sixpence tragically on the table.

"Ah!" said his aunt, suspending her breath. And she opened upon him
a lecture on how she would now have him all the spring upon her hands
doing nothing. "If you can't skeer birds, what can ye do? There!
don't ye look so deedy! Farmer Troutham is not so much better than
myself, come to that. But 'tis as Job said, 'Now they that are
younger than I have me in derision, whose fathers I would have
disdained to have set with the dogs of my flock.' His father was my
father's journeyman, anyhow, and I must have been a fool to let 'ee
go to work for 'n, which I shouldn't ha' done but to keep 'ee out of
mischty."

More angry with Jude for demeaning her by coming there than for
dereliction of duty, she rated him primarily from that point of view,
and only secondarily from a moral one.

"Not that you should have let the birds eat what Farmer Troutham
planted. Of course you was wrong in that. Jude, Jude, why didstn't
go off with that schoolmaster of thine to Christminster or somewhere?
But, oh no--poor or'nary child--there never was any sprawl on thy
side of the family, and never will be!"

"Where is this beautiful city, Aunt--this place where Mr. Phillotson
is gone to?" asked the boy, after meditating in silence.

"Lord! you ought to know where the city of Christminster is. Near a
score of miles from here. It is a place much too good for you ever
to have much to do with, poor boy, I'm a-thinking."

"And will Mr. Phillotson always be there?"

"How can I tell?"

"Could I go to see him?"

"Lord, no! You didn't grow up hereabout, or you wouldn't ask such as
that. We've never had anything to do with folk in Christminster, nor
folk in Christminster with we."

Jude went out, and, feeling more than ever his existence to be an
undemanded one, he lay down upon his back on a heap of litter near
the pig-sty. The fog had by this time become more translucent, and
the position of the sun could be seen through it. He pulled his
straw hat over his face, and peered through the interstices of the
plaiting at the white brightness, vaguely reflecting. Growing up
brought responsibilities, he found. Events did not rhyme quite as
he had thought. Nature's logic was too horrid for him to care for.
That mercy towards one set of creatures was cruelty towards another
sickened his sense of harmony. As you got older, and felt y