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Having taught for some two years in London, though she had abandoned that vocation of late, Miss Bridehead was not exactly a novice, and Phillotson thought there would be no difficulty in retaining her services, which he already wished to do, though she had only been with him three or four weeks.
Some little time before the date of this service in the cathedral the pretty, liquid-eyed, light-footed young woman Sue Bridehead had an afternoon's holiday, and leaving the ecclesiastical establishment in which she not only assisted but lodged, took a walk into the country with a book in her hand.
"Well, you have my good wishes now as always, Mrs. Phillotson." She reproached him by a glance. "No, you are not Mrs. Phillotson," murmured Jude. "You are dear, free Sue Bridehead, only you don't know it! Wifedom has not yet squashed up and digested you in its vast maw as an atom which has no further individuality."
Arabella and her friends came to it in due course, and the inscription it bore was: "Model of Cardinal College, Christminster; by J. Fawley and S. F. M. Bridehead." "Admiring their own work," said Arabella. "How like Jude always thinking of colleges and Christminster, instead of attending to his business!" They glanced cursorily at the pictures, and proceeded to the band-stand.
Conjectures were put an end to by his arrival at the village school-house near Shaston on the bright morning of Sunday, between eleven and twelve o'clock, when the parish was as vacant as a desert, most of the inhabitants having gathered inside the church, whence their voices could occasionally be heard in unison. A little girl opened the door. "Miss Bridehead is up-stairs," she said.
She now came to call Sue to tea, and, finding that the girl did not respond for a moment, entered the room just as the other was hastily putting a string round each parcel. "Something you have been buying, Miss Bridehead?" she asked, regarding the enwrapped objects. "Yes just something to ornament my room," said Sue.
After prayers they went in to supper, and every girl's thought was, Where is Sue Bridehead? Some of the students, who had seen Jude from the window, felt that they would not mind risking her punishment for the pleasure of being kissed by such a kindly-faced young men. Hardly one among them believed in the cousinship.
Presently, towards dusk, the pupils, as they sat, heard exclamations from the first-year's girls in an adjoining classroom, and one rushed in to say that Sue Bridehead had got out of the back window of the room in which she had been confined, escaped in the dark across the lawn, and disappeared.
Why, yes, she's the daughter of that clever chap Bridehead who did all the wrought ironwork at St. Silas' ten years ago, and went away to London afterwards. I don't know what he's doing now not much I fancy as she's come back here." Meanwhile the young woman had knocked at the office door and asked if Mr. Jude Fawley was at work in the yard.
His desire absorbed him, and left no part of him to weigh its practicability. At this time he received a nervously anxious letter from his poor old aunt, on the subject which had previously distressed her a fear that Jude would not be strong-minded enough to keep away from his cousin Sue Bridehead and her relations.
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