For a minute she sobbed chokingly, then she forced back the tears with the angry impatience of a hurt animal, and fetching a sheet of paper and pencil, sat down to write.  He was her father and he was a man with a warped idea of honour, one whose self-respect had been taken away; it was too late to teach him, one could only safeguard him now.  Opportunity did not make thieves of such as her, but it did of such as him, and she had left the opportunity—­or what he took to be it—­open.  She would close it now for ever; she would be rid of the bulb, the cause of so much trouble.  So she wrote hurriedly, a mere scrawl, while the passion was still upon her, and her eyes were still dim with tears—­

“Joost, if you have ever cared for me, take back the daffodil; take it back and don’t ask me why.”

The next morning Julia posted a small parcel, and at dinner time told Johnny and her father that she had sent the famous daffodil back to its native land.

Johnny looked up in mild surprise; he had been to the outhouse that morning to see if the bulbs were keeping dry.  “Why,” he said, “it’s in the shed!”

“No, it is not,” Julia answered, “and it never was.  The one you think it is one of the large double pale ones; I told you at the time we put them away, but you have got mixed, I expect.”

“Ah, yes, of course,” Mr. Gillat said; “I remember now; of course, I remember.”

The Captain swallowed something, but contrived to keep quiet, and only darted a glance at Johnny, the muddler, whose information could never be depended on.

When the meal was over and Mr. Gillat in the back kitchen, Captain Polkington spoke to his daughter.

“Julia,” he said, moistening his dry lips, “that man Cross thought it was the streaked daffodil that I, that—­”

His voice tailed away, but Julia only said, “Well?”

“I pledged by word of honour that it was the true one.”

Again Julia said, “Well?”

“What is to be done?” the Captain asked.

She showed no signs of grasping his meaning or at all events of helping him out.  He burst out irritably, “What on earth have you sold it for?  Nothing would induce you to do so before when I asked you to; now, all at once you have taken a freak and parted with it without any consideration whatever.  I never saw anything like women, so utterly irrational!”

“I have not sold it,” Julia told him; “only sent it away.”

“What for?  It is perfectly absurd!  I suppose you can get it back?  You must get it back.”

Julia asked “What for?” in her turn.

The Captain enlightened her.  “There is Cross,” he said; “I told him that was the daffodil, and it is not.  Something must be done; we can’t cheat him; we must send him the daffodil, or else refund the five pounds.  We should have to do that—­and we can’t.”

“No,” Julia agreed grimly; “and we would not if we could.”