Page:Hardy - Jude the Obscure, 1896.djvu/428

 "No! All is trouble, adversity, and suffering!"

"Father went away to give us children room, didn't he?"

"Partly."

It would be better to be out o' the world than in it, wouldn't it?"

"It would almost, dear."

Tis because of us children, too, isn't it, that you can't get a good lodging?"

"Well, people do object to children sometimes."

"Then if children make so much trouble, why do people have 'em?"

"Oh, because it is a law of nature.

"But we don't ask to be born?"

"No, indeed."

"And what makes it worse with me is that you are not my real mother, and you needn't have had me unless you liked. I oughtn't to have come to 'ee—that's the real truth! I troubled 'em in Australia, and I trouble folk here. I wish I hadn't been born!"

"You couldn't help it, my dear."

"I think that whenever children be born that are not wanted they should be killed directly, before their souls come to 'em, and not allowed to grow big and walk about!"

Sue did not reply. She was doubtfully pondering how to treat this too reflective child.

She at last concluded that, so far as circumstances permitted, she would be honest and candid with one who entered into her difficulties like an aged friend.

"There is going to be another in our family soon," she hesitatingly remarked.

"How?"

"There is going to be another baby."

"What!" The boy jumped up wildly. "O God, mother, you've never a-sent for another; and such trouble with what you've got!"