She was silent, for she was easily repressed; and then perceived behind the group of children clustered round the model a young man in a white flannel jacket, his form being bent so low in his intent inspection of the Valley of Jehoshaphat that his face was almost hidden from view by the Mount of Olives. `Look at your cousin Jude,' continued the schoolmaster. `He doesn't think we have had enough of Jerusalem!'

`Ah - I didn't see him!' she cried in her quick, light voice. `Jude - how seriously you are going into it!'

Jude started up from his reverie, and saw her. `Oh - Sue!' he said, with a glad flush of embarrassment. `These are your school-children, of course! I saw that schools were admitted in the afternoons, and thought you might come; but I got so deeply interested that I didn't remember where I was. How it carries one back, doesn't it! I could examine it for hours, but I have only a few minutes, unfortunately; for I am in the middle of a job out here.'

`Your cousin is so terribly clever that she criticizes it unmercifully,' said Phillotson, with good-humoured satire. `She is quite sceptical as to its correctness.'

`No, Mr. Phillotson, I am not - altogether! I hate to be what is called a clever girl - there are too many of that sort now!' answered Sue sensitively. `I only meant - I don't know what I meant - except that it was what you don't understand!'

`I know your meaning,' said Jude ardently (although he did not). `And I think you are quite right.'

`That's a good Jude - I know you believe in me!' She impulsively seized his hand, and leaving a reproachful look on the schoolmaster turned away to Jude, her voice revealing a tremor which she herself felt to be absurdly uncalled for by sarcasm so gentle. She had not the least conception how the hearts of the twain went out to her at this momentary revelation of feeling, and what a complication she was building up thereby in the futures of both.

The model wore too much of an educational aspect for the children not to tire of it soon, and a little later in the afternoon they were all marched back to Lumsdon, Jude returning to his work. He watched the juvenile flock in their clean frocks and pinafores, filing down the street towards the country beside Phillotson and Sue, and a sad, dissatisfied sense of being out of the scheme of the latters' lives had possession of him. Phillotson had invited him to walk out and see them on Friday evening, when there would be no lessons to give to Sue, and Jude had eagerly promised to avail himself of the opportunity.

Meanwhile the scholars and teachers moved homewards, and the next day, on looking on the blackboard in Sue's class, Phillotson was surprised to find upon it, skilfully drawn in chalk, a perspective view of Jerusalem, with every building shown in its place.

`I thought you took no interest in the model, and hardly looked at it?' he said.

`I hardly did,' said she, `but I remembered that much of it.'

`It is more than I had remembered myself.'

Her Majesty's school-inspector was at that time paying `surprise-visits' in this neighbourhood to test the teaching unawares; and two days later, in the middle of the morning lessons, the latch of the door was softly lifted, and in walked my gentleman, the king of terrors - to pupil-teachers.

To Mr. Phillotson the surprise was not great; like the lady in the story he had been played that trick too many times to be unprepared. But Sue's class was at the further end of the room, and her back was towards the entrance; the inspector therefore came and stood behind her and watched her teaching some half-minute before she became aware of his presence. She turned, and realized that an oft-dreaded moment had come. The effect upon her timidity was such that she uttered a cry of fright. Phillotson, with a strange instinct of solicitude quite beyond his control, was at her side just in time to prevent her