lanting
rain.

"Dear me," Mevrouw said once again, "how bad the rain must be for
Joost!"

Julia agreed, but reminded her--also once again--that it was possibly
not raining in Germany.

Mijnheer looked up from his paper to remark that the weather was very
bad for the crops.

"It is bad for every one," his wife rejoined; "but worse of all for
you. You should be in bed. Indeed, it is not fit that you should be
up; the house is like a cellar this evening."

Mijnheer did not suggest the remedy of a fire; he, too, shared the
belief that stoves should not be lighted before the appointed time; he
only protested at the idea of bed. "Pooh!" he said. "Make myself an
invalid with Joost away! Will you go and nurse my nose, and put
plasters on my chest? Go to bed now, do you say? No, no, my dear, I
will sit here; I am comfortable enough; I read my paper, I smoke my
cigar; by and by, I go out to see that my barns are all safe for the
night."

But at this Mevrouw gave an exclamation; the idea of his going out in
such weather was terrible, she said, and she said it a good many
times.

Julia bent over her work; she heard the swish of the rain on the
window, the uneven sob of the fitful wind; she heard the old people
talk, the husband persist, the wife protest. She did not look up; her
eyes were fixed on her needle, but she hardly saw it; more plainly she
saw the dark barns, the crowded shelves, the place where the blue
daffodils were. She could find them with perfect ease; could choose
one in the dark as easily as Mijnheer himself; she could substitute
for it another, one of the common sort of the same shape and size; no
one would be the wiser; even when it bloomed, with the simple yellow
flower that has beautified spring woods so long, no one would know it
was not a sport of nature, a throw back to the original parent. It was
the simplest thing in all the world; the safest. Not that that
recommended it; she would rather it had been difficult or dangerous,
it would have savoured more of a fair fight and less of trickery.
Besides, such safety was nothing; anything can be made safe with care
and forethought.

She caught her own name in the talk now; husband and wife were
speaking lower, evidently arguing as to the propriety of asking her to
go the rounds; for a moment she pretended not to hear, then she raised
her head, contempt for her own weakness in her mind. It is not
opportunity that makes thieves of thinking folk, and sh