Jude the Obsure

"Why don't you try teaching again? You once did, I heard."

"I never thought of resuming it; for I was getting on as an

art-designer."

"DO let me ask Mr. Phillotson to let you try your hand in his

school? If you like it, and go to a training college, and become a

first-class certificated mistress, you get twice as large an income

as any designer or church artist, and twice as much freedom."

"Well--ask him. Now I must go in. Good-bye, dear Jude! I am so

glad we have met at last. We needn't quarrel because 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 three or four

weeks. He had found her quite as bright as Jude had described her;

and what master-tradesman does not wish to keep an apprentice who

saves him half his labour?