Page:Hardy - Jude the Obscure, 1896.djvu/382

 having gone on to the horticultural tent, where Arabella caught a glimpse of them standing before a group of roses in bloom.

She waited a few minutes observing them, and then proceeded to join her spouse with no very amiable sentiments. She found him seated on a stool by the bar, talking to one of the gayly-dressed maids who had served him with spirits.

"I should think you had enough of this business at home!" Arabella remarked, gloomily. "Surely you didn't come fifty miles from your own bar to go into another? Come, take me round the show, as other men do their wives! Dammy, one would think you were a young bachelor, with nobody to look after but yourself!"

"But we agreed to meet here; and what could I do but wait?"

"Well, now we have met, come along," she returned, ready to quarrel with the sun for shining on her. And they left the tent together, this pot-bellied man and florid woman, in the antipathetic, recriminatory mood of the average husband and wife of Christendom.

In the meantime the more exceptional couple and the boy still lingered in the pavilion of flowers—an enchanted palace to their appreciative taste—Sue's usually pale cheeks reflecting the pink of the tinted roses at which she gazed; for the gay sights, the air, the music, and the excitement of a day's outing with Jude had quickened her blood and made her eyes sparkle with vivacity. She adored roses, and what Arabella had witnessed was Sue detaining Jude almost against his will while she learned the names of this variety and that, and put her face within an inch of their blooms to smell them.

"I should like to push my face quite into them—the dears!" she had said. But I suppose it is against the rules to touch them—isn't it, Jude?"

"Yes, you baby," said he; and then playfully gave her a little push, so that her nose went among the petals.