On entering the cottage he found his aunt selling a penny loaf to a

little girl, and when the customer was gone she said, "Well, how do

you come to be back here in the middle of the morning like this?"

"I'm turned away."

"What?"

"Mr. Troutham have turned me away because I let the rooks have a few

peckings of corn. And there's my wages--the last I shall ever hae!"

He threw the sixpence tragically on the table.

"Ah!" said his aunt, suspending her breath. And she opened upon him

a lecture on how she would now have him all the spring upon her hands

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doing nothing. "If you can't skeer birds, what can ye do? There!

don't ye look so deedy! Farmer Troutham is not so much better than

myself, come to that. But 'tis as Job said, 'Now they that are

younger than I have me in derision, whose fathers I would have

disdained to have set with the dogs of my flock.' His father was my

father's journeyman, anyhow, and I must have been a fool to let 'ee

go to work for 'n, which I shouldn't ha' done but to keep 'ee out of

mischty."

More angry with Jude for demeaning her by coming there than for

dereliction of duty, she rated him primarily from that point of view,

and only secondarily from a moral one.

"Not that you should have let the birds eat what Farmer Troutham

planted. Of course you was wrong in that. Jude, Jude, why didstn't

go off with that schoolmaster of thine to Christminster or somewhere?

But, oh no--poor or'nary child--there never was any sprawl on thy

side of the family, and never will be!"

"Where is this beautiful city, Aunt--this place where Mr. Phillotson

is gone to?" asked the boy, after meditating in silence.

"Lord! you ought to know where the city of Christminster is. Near a

score of miles from here. It is a place much too good for you ever

to have much to do with, poor boy, I'm a-thinking."

"And will Mr. Phillotson always be there?"

"How can I tell?"

"Could I go to see him?"

"Lord, no! You didn't grow up hereabout, or you wouldn't ask such as

that. We've never had anything to do with folk in Christminster, nor

folk in Christminster with we."

Jude went out, and, feeling more than ever his existence to be an

undemanded one, he lay down upon his back on a heap of litter near

the pig-sty. The fog had by this time become more translucent, and

the position of the sun could be seen through it. He pulled his

straw hat over his face, and peered through the interstices of the

plaiting at the white brightness, vaguely reflecting. Growing up

brought responsibilities, he found. Events did not rhyme quite as

he had thought. Nature's logic was too horrid for him to care for.

That mercy towards one set of creatures was cruelty towards another

sickened his sense of harmony. As you got older, and felt yourself

to be at the centre of your time, and not at a point in its

circumference, as you had felt when you were little, you were seized

with a sort of shuddering, he perceived. All around you there seemed

to be something glaring, garish, rattling, and the noises and glares

hit upon the little cell called your life, and shook it, and warped

it.




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