Page:Hardy - Jude the Obscure, 1896.djvu/203

 V

he returned she was dressed as usual.

"Now could I get out without anybody seeing me?" she asked. "The town is not yet astir."

"But you have had no breakfast?"

"Oh, I don't want any! I fear I ought not to have run away from that school! Things seem so different in the cold light of morning, don't they? What Mr. Phillotson will say I don't know! It was quite by his wish that I went there. He is the only man in the world for whom I have any respect or fear. I hope he'll forgive me; but he'll scold me dreadfully, I expect!"

"I'll go to him and explain—" began Jude.

"Oh no, you sha'n't. I don't care for him! He may think what he likes—I shall do just as I choose!"

"But you just this moment said—"

"Well, if I did, I shall do as I like for all him! I have thought of what I shall do—go to the sister of one of my fellow students in the Training-School, who has asked me to visit her. She has a school near Shaston, about eighteen miles from here—and I shall stay there till this has blown over, and I get back to the Training-School again."

At the last moment he persuaded her to let him make her a cup of coffee, in a portable apparatus he kept in his room for use on rising to go to his work every day before the household was astir.

"Now a dew-bit to eat with it," he said, "and off we go. You can have a regular breakfast when you get there."