Page:Hardy - Jude the Obscure, 1896.djvu/401

 "Perhaps my husband has altered a little since then. I am not sure he is not proud now," and Sue's lips quivered again. "I am doing this because he caught a chill early in the year while putting up some stone-work of a music-hall at Quartershot, which he had to do in the rain, the work having to be executed by a fixed day. He is better than he was; but it has been a long, weary time! We have had an old widow friend with us to help us through it; but she's leaving soon."

"Well, I am respectable too, thank God, and of a serious way of thinking since my loss. Why did you choose to sell gingerbreads?"

"That's a pure accident. He was brought up to the baking business, and it occurred to him to try his hand at these, which he can make without coming out-of-doors. We call them Christminster cakes. They are a great success."

"I never saw any like 'em. Why, they are windows and towers and pinnacles! And upon my word, they are very nice." She had helped herself, and was unceremoniously munching one of the cakes.

"Yes. They are reminiscences of the Christminster Colleges. Traceried windows and cloisters, you see. It was a whim of his to do them in pastry."

"Still harping on Christminster—even in his cakes!" laughed Arabella. "Just like Jude. A ruling passion. What a queer fellow he is, and always will be!"

Sue sighed, and she looked her distress at hearing him criticised.

"Don't you think he is? Come, now, you do, though you are so fond of him!"

"Of course Christminster is a sort of fixed vision with him, which I suppose he'll never be cured of believing in. He still thinks it a great centre of high and fearless thought, instead of what it is—a nest of commonplace school-masters, whose characteristic is timid obsequiousness to tradition."