Page:Hardy - Jude the Obscure, 1896.djvu/429

 "Yes, I have, I am sorry to say," murmured Sue, her eyes glistening with suspended tears.

The boy burst out weeping. "Oh, you don't care, you don't care!" he cried, in bitter reproach. "How ever could you, mother, be so wicked and cruel as this, when you needn't have done it till we was better off, and father well! To bring us all into more trouble! No room for us, and father a-forced to go away, and we turned out tomorrow; and yet you be going to have another of us soon!... 'Tis done o' purpose—'tis—'tis!" He walked up and down sobbing.

"Y-you must forgive me, little Jude!" she pleaded, her bosom heaving now as much as the boy's. "I can't explain; I will when you are older. It does seem—as if I had done it on purpose, now we are in these difficulties. I can't explain, dear. But it—it is not quite on purpose; I can't help it."

"Yes it is—it must be! For nobody would interfere with us, like that, unless you agreed! I won't forgive you, ever, ever! I'll never believe you care for me, or father, or any of us any more!"

He got up, and went away into the closet adjoining her room, in which a bed had been spread on the floor. There she heard him say, "If we children was gone there'd be no trouble at all!"

"Don't think that, dear," she cried, rather peremptorily, "but go to sleep!"

The following morning she awoke at a little past six, and decided to get up and run across before breakfast to the inn which Jude had informed her to be his quarters, to tell him what had happened before he went out. She arose softly, to avoid disturbing the children, who, as she knew, must be fatigued by their exertions of yesterday.

She found Jude at breakfast in the obscure tavern he had chosen as a counterpoise to the expense of her lodging, and she explained to him her homelessness. He had been so anxious about her all night, he said. Somehow,