could hardly do
anything of importance except in each other's company.

Jude Fawley signed the form of notice, Sue looking over his shoulder
and watching his hand as it traced the words. As she read the
four-square undertaking, never before seen by her, into which
her own and Jude's names were inserted, and by which that very
volatile essence, their love for each other, was supposed to be
made permanent, her face seemed to grow painfully apprehensive.
"Names and Surnames of the Parties"--(they were to be parties now,
not lovers, she thought). "Condition"--(a horrid idea)--"Rank or
Occupation"--"Age"--"Dwelling at"--"Length of Residence"--"Church or
Building in which the Marriage is to be solemnized"--"District and
County in which the Parties respectively dwell."

"It spoils the sentiment, doesn't it!" she said on their way home.
"It seems making a more sordid business of it even than signing the
contract in a vestry. There is a little poetry in a church. But
we'll try to get through with it, dearest, now."

"We will. 'For what man is he that hath betrothed a wife and hath
not taken her? Let him go and return unto his house, lest he
die in the battle, and another man take her.' So said the Jewish
law-giver."

"How you know the Scriptures, Jude! You really ought to have been a
parson. I can only quote profane writers!"

During the interval before the issuing of the certificate Sue, in her
housekeeping errands, sometimes walked past the office, and furtively
glancing in saw affixed to the wall the notice of the purposed clinch
to their union. She could not bear its aspect. Coming after her
previous experience of matrimony, all the romance of their attachment
seemed to be starved away by placing her present case in the same
category. She was usually leading little Father Time by the hand,
and fancied that people thought him hers, and regarded the intended
ceremony as the patching up of an old error.

Meanwhile Jude decided to link his present with his past in some
slight degree by inviting to the wedding the only person remaining on
earth who was associated with his early life at Marygreen--the aged
widow Mrs. Edlin, who had been his great-aunt's friend and nurse in
her last illness. He hardly expected that she would come; but she
did, bringing singular presents, in the form of apples, jam, brass
snuffers, an ancient pewter dish, a warming-pan, and an enormous bag
of goose feathers towards a bed. She w