me, doing without everything but the barest necessaries,
without some things that are necessaries in my state of health, what
your mother is doing, how she has given up her home, her husband, to
live almost on charity in her son-in-law's house. When you think of
all that, I say, and of what your sisters have done, it does seem
strange that you should grudge this bulb, simply and solely because it
was given you by some people for whom you care nothing."

Julia agreed; she never saw the purpose of contradicting when
conviction was out of the question. "It does seem strange," she said;
"but there is one comfort, the worst of the debts will be cleared off
by the end of the year. Uncle William knows that and has arranged for
it in his own mind; I really think it would be almost a pity to
disturb the business plans of any one so exact."

"Are we," the Captain returned scornfully, "to pinch and save to the
end of the year? Am I to do without the few comforts that might make
life tolerable? Am I to work like a farm labourer and live like one
till then, because you choose to keep this bulb?"

Julia thought it was very probable things would go on as they were for
some time, but she did not say so; she only said, "I am sorry you find
it so trying."

"Trying!" her father said, and stopped, as if he found the word and
most others very inadequate. "After all, it does not much matter," he
remarked in a tone of gloomy resignation. "I shan't be here, in any
one's way, much longer; there is not the least chance that I shall
live till the end of the year, and when I am gone you can do what you
please, what you must, with your bulb. I own I should like to see you
a little more comfortable and better off now. I hate to have you doing
servant's work and going shabby as you have to. I should like you to
be decently dressed, taking your proper place in society, but if you
think it right to go on as you are and to keep your bulb, of course I
have nothing to say."

It was as well he had nothing, for Julia remembered the jam and went
indoors, so he would have had no one to say it to. She went into the
back kitchen, thinking, but not of the jam. Once again the temptation
to sell the daffodil beset her; not to Cross, he was the last man to
whom she would have sold it, but to some collector who would care for
it as the Van Heigens would. She could easily find such a one with or
without assistance from Cross; little harm would be done to the Van