and came on here that evening with her! ... Ah - I do remember now that she said something about having a thing on her mind that she would like me to know, if ever we lived together again.'

`The poor child seems to be wanted by nobody!' Sue replied, and her eyes filled.

Jude had by this time come to himself. `What a view of life he must have, mine or not mine!' he said. `I must say that, if I were better off, I should not stop for a moment to think whose he might be. I would take him and bring him up. The beggarly question of parentage - what is it, after all? What does it matter, when you come to think of it, whether a child is yours by blood or not? All the little ones of our time are collectively the children of us adults of the time, and entitled to our general care. That excessive regard of parents for their own children, and their dislike of other people's, is, like class-feeling, patriotism, save- your-own-soul-ism, and other virtues, a mean exclusiveness at bottom.'

Sue jumped up and kissed Jude with passionate devotion. `Yes - so it is, dearest! And we'll have him here! And if he isn't yours it makes it all the better. I do hope he isn't - though perhaps I ought not to feel quite that! If he isn't, I should like so much for us to have him as an adopted child!'

`Well, you must assume about him what is most pleasing to you, my curious little comrade!' he said. `I feel that, anyhow, I don't like to leave the unfortunate little fellow to neglect. Just think of his life in a Lambeth pothouse, and all its evil influences, with a parent who doesn't want him, and has, indeed, hardly seen him, and a stepfather who doesn't know him. `Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, There is a man child conceived!' That's what the boy - my boy, perhaps, will find himself saying before long!'

`Oh no!'

`As I was the petitioner, I am really entitled to his custody, I suppose.'

`Whether or no, we must have him. I see that. I'll do the best I can to be a mother to him, and we can afford to keep him somehow. I'll work harder. I wonder when he'll arrive?'

`In the course of a few weeks, I suppose.'

`I wish - When shall we have courage to marry, Jude?'

`Whenever you have it, I think I shall. It remains with you entirely, dear. Only say the word, and it's done.'

`Before the boy comes?'

`Certainly.'

`It would make a more natural home for him, perhaps,' she murmured.

Jude thereupon wrote in purely formal terms to request that the boy should be sent on to them as soon as he arrived, making no remark whatever on the surprising nature of Arabella's information, nor vouchsafing a single word of opinion on the boy's paternity, nor on whether, had he known all this, his conduct towards her would have been quite the same.

In the down-train that was timed to reach Aldbrickham station about ten o'clock the next evening, a small, pale child's face could be seen in the gloom of a third-class carriage. He had large, frightened eyes, and wore a white woollen cravat, over which a key was suspended round his neck by a piece of common string: the key attracting attention by its occasional shine in the lamplight. In the band of his hat his half- ticket was stuck. His eyes remained mostly fixed on the back of the seat opposite, and never turned to the window even when a station was reached and called. On the other seat were two or three passengers, one of them a working woman who held a basket on her lap, in which was a tabby kitten. The woman opened the cover now and then, whereupon the kitten would put out its head, and indulge in playful


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