This was the last reference that was made to the sale of the daffodil and the expedition to town; after that the matter was left out of conversation and Julia behaved as if it had never existed.  But Captain Polkington was very unhappy; he could not get over the affair and his own failure; he brooded over it in silence, feeling and resenting that he could not speak to either Johnny or Julia, they being quite unable to understand his emotions.  Once or twice he raged weakly against Cross, who had given him five pounds when he had asked twenty for a thing worth two hundred; who had doubted his word, who had behaved as if he were a common thief—­who would, doubtless, think him one.  More often his indignation burnt up against Julia who would do nothing to remedy this last catastrophe, and clear him and reinstate his honour in the eyes of this man and himself.  Most often of all his quarrel was with fate, and then his anger broke down into self-pity as he thought of all the troubles that were crowding about his later years; of his lost reputation, his lack of sympathy and comprehension; the failure of all his plans and hopes, the poverty and feeble health that oppressed him.  In these gloomy days he had one ray of comfort only; it lay in the purchase he had made on that day that he went shopping.  That whisky was the solitary thing in the day’s adventure about which Julia had not heard; everything else she had been told, but somehow that had escaped.  One reason of this, no doubt, lay in the fact that Captain Polkington had not brought his purchase home with him that evening.  He had meant to; when the carrier set him and his property down just outside Halgrave, he had fully meant to carry it to the cottage.  But he found it so heavy and cumbersome in his weak and dejected state that he had to give it up.  So he found a suitable hiding-place in the deep overgrown ditch beside the road, and, thrusting it as much out of sight as he could, left it there and went home unburdened.  He meant to tell Julia and Johnny about it, they of course were to have shared, and one or both of them would go with him to fetch it home in the morning.  But he did not tell them; it did not seem suitable at first; they, each in a different way, were too unsympathetic about the expedition to town; he determined to wait for a fitting opportunity.  The opportunity did not come; but in course of time the whisky was moved and gave comfort of sorts during the autumn days to the Captain’s drooping spirits, if it had a less beneficial effect on his failing health.

In the meantime the daffodil, “The Good Comrade,” had gone back to its native land, and with it an appeal, written in English, badly written, scrawled almost—­but not likely to be refused.  Joost read it through once, twice, more times than that; it said little, only, take back the bulb and ask no questions, yet he felt he had been honoured by Julia’s confidence.  The very style and haste of the letter seemed an honour to him; it showed him she had need and had turned to him in it.  Of course he would do as she asked; he would have done things far harder than that.  He folded the slip of paper and put it away where he kept some few treasures, and for a time he put with it the bulb she had sent; and sometimes when he went to bed of a night—­he had no other free time—­he took both out and looked at them.