That after all these years the meeting with Mr. Phillotson should be

of this homely complexion destroyed at one stroke the halo which had

surrounded the school-master's figure in Jude's imagination ever

since their parting. It created in him at the same time a sympathy

with Phillotson as an obviously much chastened and disappointed man.

Jude told him his name, and said he had come to see him as an old

friend who had been kind to him in his youthful days.

"I don't remember you in the least," said the school-master

thoughtfully. "You were one of my pupils, you say? Yes, no doubt;

but they number so many thousands by this time of my life, and have

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naturally changed so much, that I remember very few except the quite

recent ones."

"It was out at Marygreen," said Jude, wishing he had not come.

"Yes. I was there a short time. And is this an old pupil, too?"

"No--that's my cousin... I wrote to you for some grammars, if you

recollect, and you sent them?"

"Ah--yes!--I do dimly recall that incident."

"It was very kind of you to do it. And it was you who first started

me on that course. On the morning you left Marygreen, when your

goods were on the waggon, you wished me good-bye, and said your

scheme was to be a university man and enter the Church--that a degree

was the necessary hall-mark of one who wanted to do anything as a

theologian or teacher."

"I remember I thought all that privately; but I wonder I did not keep

my own counsel. The idea was given up years ago."

"I have never forgotten it. It was that which brought me to this

part of the country, and out here to see you to-night."

"Come in," said Phillotson. "And your cousin, too."

They entered the parlour of the school-house, where there was a lamp

with a paper shade, which threw the light down on three or four

books. Phillotson took it off, so that they could see each other

better, and the rays fell on the nervous little face and vivacious

dark eyes and hair of Sue, on the earnest features of her cousin,

and on the schoolmaster's own maturer face and figure, showing him

to be a spare and thoughtful personage of five-and-forty, with a

thin-lipped, somewhat refined mouth, a slightly stooping habit, and

a black frock coat, which from continued frictions shone a little at

the shoulder-blades, the middle of the back, and the elbows.




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