Page:Hardy - Jude the Obscure, 1896.djvu/354

 "It hits me hard!" said he, in an under-voice. "It may be true! I can't make it out. Certainly, if his age is exactly what it ought to be.... I cannot think why she didn't tell me when I met her at Christminster, and came on here that evening with her!... Ah—I do remember now that she said something about having a thing on her mind that she would like me to know, if ever we lived together again."

"The poor child seems to be wanted by nobody!" Sue replied, and her eyes filled.

Jude had by this time come to himself. "What a view of life he must have, mine or not mine!" he said. "I must say that, if I were better off, I should not stop for a moment to think whose he might be. I would take him and bring him up. The beggarly question of parentage—what is it, after all? What does it matter, when you come to think of it, whether a child is yours by blood or not? All the little ones of our time are collectively the children of us adults of the time, and entitled to our general care. That excessive regard of parents for their own children, and their dislike of other people's is, like class feeling, patriotism, save-your-own-soul-ism, and other virtues, a mean exclusiveness at bottom."

Sue jumped up and kissed Jude with passionate devotion. "Yes—so it is, dearest! And we'll have him here. And if he isn't yours it makes it all the better. I do hope he isn't—though perhaps I ought not to feel quite that! If he isn't, I should like so much for us to have him as an adopted child!"

"Well, you must assume about him what is most pleasing to you, my curious little comrade!" he said. "I feel that, anyhow, I don't like to leave the unfortunate little fellow to neglect. Just think of his life in a Lambeth pot-house, and all its evil influences, with a parent who doesn't want him, and has, indeed, hardly seen him, and a step-father who doesn't know him. 'Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was