"How much are these two?" she said, touching with her finger the
Venus and the Apollo--the largest figures on the tray.
He said she should have them for ten shillings.
"I cannot afford that," said Sue. She offered considerably less,
and to her surprise the image-man drew them from their wire stay and
handed them over the stile. She clasped them as treasures.
When they were paid for, and the man had gone, she began to be
concerned as to what she should do with them. They seemed so very
large now that they were in her possession, and so very naked.
Being of a nervous temperament she trembled at her enterprise.
When she handled them the white pipeclay came off on her gloves and
jacket. After carrying them along a little way openly an idea came
to her, and, pulling some huge burdock leaves, parsley, and other
rank growths from the hedge, she wrapped up her burden as well as she
could in these, so that what she carried appeared to be an enormous
armful of green stuff gathered by a zealous lover of nature.
"Well, anything is better than those everlasting church fallals!" she
said. But she was still in a trembling state, and seemed almost to
wish she had not bought the figures.
Occasionally peeping inside the leaves to see that Venus's arm was
not broken, she entered with her heathen load into the most Christian
city in the country by an obscure street running parallel to the main
one, and round a corner to the side door of the establishment to
which she was attached. Her purchases were taken straight up to her
own chamber, and she at once attempted to lock them in a box that was
her very own property; but finding them too cumbersome she wrapped
them in large sheets of brown paper, and stood them on the floor in a
corner.
The mistress of the house, Miss Fontover, was an elderly lady in
spectacles, dressed almost like an abbess; a dab at Ritual, as become
one of her business, and a worshipper at the ceremonial church of St.
Silas, in the suburb of Beersheba before-mentioned, which Jude also
had begun to attend. She was the daughter of a clergyman in reduced
circumstances, and at his death, which had occurred several years
before this date, she boldly avoided penury by taking over a little
shop of church requisites and developing it to its present creditable
proportions. She wore a cross and beads round her neck as her only
ornament, and knew the Christian Year by heart.