sort--quite."

"Not easily moved?"

"I didn't quite mean that."

"Oh, but you ARE one of that sort, for you are just like me at
heart!"

"But not at head."

She played on and suddenly turned round; and by an unpremeditated
instinct each clasped the other's hand again.

She uttered a forced little laugh as she relinquished his quickly.
"How funny!" she said. "I wonder what we both did that for?"

"I suppose because we are both alike, as I said before."

"Not in our thoughts! Perhaps a little in our feelings."

"And they rule thoughts... Isn't it enough to make one blaspheme
that the composer of that hymn is one of the most commonplace men I
ever met!"

"What--you know him?"

"I went to see him."

"Oh, you goose--to do just what I should have done! Why did you?"

"Because we are not alike," he said drily.

"Now we'll have some tea," said Sue. "Shall we have it here instead
of in my house? It is no trouble to get the kettle and things
brought in. We don't live at the school you know, but in that
ancient dwelling across the way called Old-Grove Place. It is so
antique and dismal that it depresses me dreadfully. Such houses are
very well to visit, but not to live in--I feel crushed into the earth
by the weight of so many previous lives there spent. In a new place
like these schools there is only your own life to support. Sit down,
and I'll tell Ada to bring the tea-things across."

He waited in the light of the stove, the door of which she flung open
before going out, and when she returned, followed by the maiden with
tea, they sat down by the same light, assisted by the blue rays of a
spirit-lamp under the brass kettle on the stand.

"This is one of your wedding-presents to me," she said, signifying
the latter.

"Yes," said Jude.

The kettle of his gift sang with some satire in its note, to his
mind; and to change the subject he said, "Do you know of any good
readable edition of the uncanonical books of the New Testament? You
don't read them in the school I suppose?"

"Oh dear no!--'twould alarm the neighbourhood... Yes, there is one.
I am not familiar with it now, though I was interested in it when my
former friend was alive. Cowper's _Apocryphal Gospels_."

"That sounds like what I want." His thoughts, however reverted with
a twinge to the "former friend"--by whom she meant, as he knew, the
university comrade of her earlier days. He wondered if she talked of
him to Phillotson.