Page:Hardy - Jude the Obscure, 1896.djvu/56

 "Oh yes; if you like to give it me."

"Shall I throw it across, or will you come to the plank above here for me to hand it to you?"

Perhaps she foresaw an opportunity; for somehow or other the eyes of the brown girl rested in his own when he had said the words, and there was a momentary flash of intelligence, a dumb announcement of affinity in posse, between herself and him, which, so far as Jude Fawley was concerned, had no sort of premeditation in it. She saw that he had singled her out from the three, as a woman is singled out in such cases, for no reasoned purpose of further acquaintance, but in commonplace obedience to conjunctive orders from headquarters, unconsciously received by unfortunate men when the last intention of their lives is to be occupied with the feminine.

Springing to her feet, she said: "Don't throw it! Give it to me."

Jude was now aware that the intrinsic value of the missile had nothing to do with her request. He set down his basket of tools, raked out with his stick the slip of flesh from the ditch, and got over the hedge. They walked in parallel lines, one on each bank of the stream, towards the small plank bridge. As the girl drew nearer to it she gave, without Jude perceiving it, an adroit little suck to the interior of each of her cheeks in succession by which curious and original manœuvre she brought as by magic upon its smooth and rotund surface a perfect dimple, which she was able to retain there as long as she continued to smile. This production of dimples at will was a not unknown operation, which many attempted but only a few succeeded in accomplishing.

They met in the middle of the plank, and Jude held out his stick with the fragment of pig dangling therefrom, looking elsewhere the while, and faintly coloring.

She, too, looked in another direction, and took the piece as though ignorant of what her hand was doing. She hung it temporarily on the rail of the bridge, and