“Supposing,” he said at last, “that it was only a sport, and that next year it reverts and is blue as are the others, the parent bulbs?  Miss Julia thinks of that—­she would not like to be paid for it now in case of such a thing, will you not at least wait until the spring?  She has given nothing for it herself; it is not as if she had sunk money and wants an immediate return.”

Mijnheer did not consider that made any difference and he said so, reading his son a lecture on business morality according to his standard, of a very severe order.  Joost listened with meekness to the entirely undeserved reproof for meanness and dishonourable views; then the old man announced finally what he should do.  He should write to Julia and offer her a smallish sum down in case the bulb proved to be of no great worth, and a promise of a proportional percentage afterwards if it proved valuable.  This idea pleased him very well; it satisfied his notions of integrity and fair dealing and also his thrifty soul, which found trying the otherwise unavoidable duty of paying a long price for what had been freely given.  From this Joost could not move him, so there was nothing for him to do but write distressfully to Julia and explain and apologise.

CHAPTER XXII

THE LINE OF LEAST RESISTANCE

Julia was at work in the kitchen; it was ten o’clock on a November morning and she was busy; Captain Polkington had had breakfast up-stairs, he often did now, and it delayed the morning’s work.  Mr. Gillat brought in two letters which the postman had left; both were for Julia, but she had not time to read them now, so she put them down on the table; they would keep; she did not feel greatly interested to know what was inside them.  Things did not interest her as they used; in some imperceptible way she had aged; some of the elasticity and youth was gone, perhaps because hope was gone.  It had been dying all the summer, ever since the day when she crouched behind the chopping-block; but gently and gradually, as the year dies, with some beauties unknown in early days and little recurrent spurts of hope and youth, like the flowers that bloom into winter’s lap.  But it was dead now; there had come to her, as it were, a sudden frost, and, as befalls in the years, too, the late blooming flowers, the coloured leaves, the last beautiful clinging remnants of life withered all at once and fell away.  It was unreasonable, perhaps, that the Captain’s theft of the daffodil and what arose from it should have had this result; but then it was possibly unreasonable that hope and youth should have had any autumn at all and not died right off when she said “No” and meant it that afternoon in the early summer.  But then the mind of man—­and woman—­is unreasonable.