Page:Hardy - Jude the Obscure, 1896.djvu/488

 and he could hear voices within, though the shutters of the meat-stall were not down. He went and tapped at the sitting-room door, and opened it.

"Well, to be sure!" he said, astonished.

Hosts and guests were sitting card-playing, smoking, and talking, precisely as he had left them eleven hours earlier; the gas was burning and the curtains drawn, though it had been broad daylight for two hours out-of-doors.

"Yes!" cried Arabella, laughing, "here we are, just the same. We ought to be ashamed of ourselves, oughtn't we? But it is a sort of house-warming, you see, and our friends are in no hurry. Come in, Mr. Taylor, and sit down."

The tinker, or, rather, reduced ironmonger, was nothing loath, and entered and took a seat. "I shall lose a quarter, but never mind," he said. Well, really, I could hardly believe my eyes when I looked in! It seemed as if I was flung back again into last night all of a sudden."

"So you are. Pour out for Mr. Taylor."

He now perceived that she was sitting beside Jude, her arm being round his waist. Jude, like the rest of the company, bore on his face the signs of how deeply he had been indulging.

"Well, we've been waiting for certain legal hours to arrive, to tell the truth," she continued, bashfully, and making her spirituous crimson look as much like a maiden blush as possible. "Jude and I have decided to make up matters between us by tying the knot again, as we find we can't do without one another, after all. So, as a bright notion, we agreed to sit on till it was late enough, and go and do it off-hand."

Jude seemed to pay no great heed to what she was announcing, or, indeed, to anything whatever. The entrance of Taylor infused fresh spirit into the company, and they remained sitting, till Arabella whispered to her father: "Now we may as well go."