priceless Nankeen china while her husband smoked long cigars with Mijnheer on the veranda, but that was all her own fault.  Denah came to tea drinking, she and her lately-wed husband, the bashful son of a well-to-do shipowner.  She was very smiling and all bustling and greatly pleased with herself and all things, and if she thought poorly of Julia for washing the plates, she thought very well of the glittering rings she had left on the veranda-table and well, too, of her husband, who she recognised as the mysterious “man of good family” they had seen on the day they drove to the wood.  And afterwards when the tea drinking was done and the dew was falling, Julia walked with Joost among his flowers, and heard him speak of his hopes and ambitions, and knew that in his work he had found all the satisfaction that a man may reasonably hope for here.

Later, Julia and her husband walked through the tidy streets of the town, looking in at lighted windows, listening to the patois of the peasants and recalling past times.  It was then that he told her how he had that day tried to buy back the streaked daffodil.

“And Mijnheer would not sell it?” she asked.

“No,” he answered; “not at any price, so I am afraid that you will have to do without ‘The Good Comrade’ after all.”

“I?” she said; “I can do quite well.  Thank you for trying to get it; all the same I am not sure I want it back.”

“Do you not?  Then I am quite sure that I do not, indeed, I rather fancy I already have the real ‘Good Comrade.’”