; that was the thing - a husband with a lot
of earning power in him for buying her frocks and hats when he should begin to
get frightened a bit, and stick to his trade, and throw aside those stupid books
for practical undertakings.
    So to the cottage he took her on the evening of the marriage, giving up his
old room at his aunt's - where so much of the hard labour at Greek and Latin had
been carried on.
    A little chill overspread him at her first unrobing. A long tail of hair,
which Arabella wore twisted up in an enormous knob at the back of her head, was
deliberately unfastened, stroked out, and hung upon the looking-glass which he
had bought her.
    »What - it wasn't your own?« he said, with a sudden distaste for her.
    »O no - it never is nowadays with the better class.«
    »Nonsense! Perhaps not in towns. But in the country it is supposed to be
different. Besides, you've enough of your own, surely?«
    »Yes, enough as country notions go. But in towns the men expect more, and
when I was barmaid at Aldbrickham --«
    »Barmaid at Aldbrickham?
    Well, not exactly barmaid - I used to draw the drink at a public-house there
- just for a little time; that was all. Some people put me up to getting this,
and I bought it just for a fancy. The more you have the better in Aldbrickham,
which is a finer town than all your Christminsters. Every lady of position wears
false hair - the barber's assistant told me so.«
    Jude thought with a feeling of sickness that though this might be true to
some extent, for all that he knew, many unsophisticated girls would and did go
to towns and remain there for years without losing their simplicity of life and
embellishments. Others, alas, had an instinct towards artificiality in their
very blood, and became adepts in counterfeiting at the first glimpse of it.
However, perhaps there was no great sin in a woman adding to her hair, and he
resolved to think no more of it.
    A new-made wife can usually manage to excite interest for a few weeks, even
though the prospects of the household ways and means are cloudy. There is a
certain piquancy about her situation, and her manner to her acquaintance at the
sense of it, which carries off the gloom of facts, and renders even the humblest
bride independent awhile of the real. Mrs. Jude Fawley was walking in the