st against
his will while she learnt the names of this variety and that, and put
her face within an inch of their blooms to smell them.

"I should like to push my face quite into them--the dears!" she had
said. "But I suppose it is against the rules to touch them--isn't
it, Jude?"

"Yes, you baby," said he: and then playfully gave her a little push,
so that her nose went among the petals.

"The policeman will be down on us, and I shall say it was my
husband's fault!"

Then she looked up at him, and smiled in a way that told so much to
Arabella.

"Happy?" he murmured.

She nodded.

"Why? Because you have come to the great Wessex Agricultural
Show--or because WE have come?"

"You are always trying to make me confess to all sorts of
absurdities. Because I am improving my mind, of course, by seeing
all these steam-ploughs, and threshing-machines, and chaff-cutters,
and cows, and pigs, and sheep."

Jude was quite content with a baffle from his ever evasive companion.
But when he had forgotten that he had put the question, and because
he no longer wished for an answer, she went on: "I feel that we have
returned to Greek joyousness, and have blinded ourselves to sickness
and sorrow, and have forgotten what twenty-five centuries have taught
the race since their time, as one of your Christminster luminaries
says... There is one immediate shadow, however--only one." And
she looked at the aged child, whom, though they had taken him to
everything likely to attract a young intelligence, they had utterly
failed to interest.

He knew what they were saying and thinking. "I am very, very sorry,
Father and Mother," he said. "But please don't mind!--I can't help
it. I should like the flowers very very much, if I didn't keep on
thinking they'd be all withered in a few days!"

VI

The unnoticed lives that the pair had hitherto led began, from the
day of the suspended wedding onwards, to be observed and discussed by
other persons than Arabella. The society of Spring Street and the
neighbourhood generally did not understand, and probably could not
have been made to understand, Sue and Jude's private minds, emotions,
positions, and fears. The curious facts of a child coming to them
unexpectedly, who called Jude "Father," and Sue "Mother," and a hitch
in a marriage ceremony intended for quietness to be performed at a
registrar's office, together with rumours of the undefended cases in
the law-courts, bore only