cause our parents
did, need we?"

Jude did not like to let her see quite how much he agreed with her,
and went his way to the remote street in which he had his lodging.

To keep Sue Bridehead near him was now a desire which operated
without regard of consequences, and the next evening he again set out
for Lumsdon, fearing to trust to the persuasive effects of a note
only. The school-master was unprepared for such a proposal.

"What I rather wanted was a second year's transfer, as it is called,"
he said. "Of course your cousin would do, personally; but she has
had no experience. Oh--she has, has she? Does she really think of
adopting teaching as a profession?"

Jude said she was disposed to do so, he thought, and his ingenious
arguments on her natural fitness for assisting Mr. Phillotson, of
which Jude knew nothing whatever, so influenced the schoolmaster that
he said he would engage her, assuring Jude as a friend that unless
his cousin really meant to follow on in the same course, and regarded
this step as the first stage of an apprenticeship, of which her
training in a normal school would be the second stage, her time would
be wasted quite, the salary being merely nominal.

The day after this visit Phillotson received a letter from Jude,
containing the information that he had again consulted his cousin,
who took more and more warmly to the idea of tuition; and that
she had agreed to come. It did not occur for a moment to the
schoolmaster and recluse that Jude's ardour in promoting the
arrangement arose from any other feelings towards Sue than the
instinct of co-operation common among members of the same family.

V

The schoolmaster sat in his homely dwelling attached to the school,
both being modern erections; and he looked across the way at the old
house in which his teacher Sue had a lodging. The arrangement had
been concluded very quickly. A pupil-teacher who was to have been
transferred to Mr. Phillotson's school had failed him, and Sue had
been taken as stop-gap. All such provisional arrangements as these
could only last till the next annual visit of H.M. Inspector, whose
approval was necessary to make them permanent. Having taught for
some two years in London, though she had abandoned that vocation of
late, Miss Bridehead was not exactly a novice, and Phillotson thought
there would be no difficulty in retaining her services, which he
already wished to do, though she had only been with him