three or four
weeks. He had found her quite as bright as Jude had described her;
and what master-tradesman does not wish to keep an apprentice who
saves him half his labour?

It was a little over half-past eight o'clock in the morning and he
was waiting to see her cross the road to the school, when he would
follow. At twenty minutes to nine she did cross, a light hat tossed
on her head; and he watched her as a curiosity. A new emanation,
which had nothing to do with her skill as a teacher, seemed to
surround her this morning. He went to the school also, and Sue
remained governing her class at the other end of the room, all day
under his eye. She certainly was an excellent teacher.

It was part of his duty to give her private lessons in the evening,
and some article in the Code made it necessary that a respectable,
elderly woman should be present at these lessons when the teacher and
the taught were of different sexes. Richard Phillotson thought of
the absurdity of the regulation in this case, when he was old enough
to be the girl's father; but he faithfully acted up to it; and sat
down with her in a room where Mrs. Hawes, the widow at whose house
Sue lodged, occupied herself with sewing. The regulation was,
indeed, not easy to evade, for there was no other sitting-room in the
dwelling.

Sometimes as she figured--it was arithmetic that they were working
at--she would involuntarily glance up with a little inquiring smile
at him, as if she assumed that, being the master, he must perceive
all that was passing in her brain, as right or wrong. Phillotson was
not really thinking of the arithmetic at all, but of her, in a novel
way which somehow seemed strange to him as preceptor. Perhaps she
knew that he was thinking of her thus.

For a few weeks their work had gone on with a monotony which in
itself was a delight to him. Then it happened that the children were
to be taken to Christminster to see an itinerant exhibition, in the
shape of a model of Jerusalem, to which schools were admitted at
a penny a head in the interests of education. They marched along
the road two and two, she beside her class with her simple cotton
sunshade, her little thumb cocked up against its stem; and Phillotson
behind in his long dangling coat, handling his walking-stick
genteelly, in the musing mood which had come over him since her
arrival. The afternoon was one of sun and dust, and when they
entered the exhibition room few peopl