sence could not change it,
nor time take it away; it had been, it might be again, it obeyed no
law and answered to no argument in the world. It was something which
made her ashamed and afraid and yet glad with a rare incommunical
gladness that was pointed with pain.

Just then the jam boiled over, and she had to leave her pots to run
and save it.

It is a great thing to have your mind under fair control; the
Polkington training, wherein the advisable and advantageous were
compelled to rank high even in matter of emotion, is not without use
in bringing this about. But it is also a great thing, almost, perhaps,
a more important one for some people, to have plenty to do even if it
is only making jam.

While Julia made her jam Captain Polkington hoed; at least he did for
a little while, then he gradually ceased and stood leaning upon his
hoe, lost in unhappy thought. At last he moved, and, gathering the
withering weeds that lay beside the path, carried them to an old
basket which he had left beside the garden wall. With the weeds he
picked up the torn fragments of card which Julia had dropped beside
the doorstep; he let them fall into the basket with the other rubbish,
but when he saw them gleaming white among the green they arrested his
attention. For a moment he looked at them, then he carefully picked
them out; he had some thought of appealing to Julia once more, or
telling her that he had saved the man's address for her and she had
one last chance. He sat down on the wall; would it be any good to
appeal? he asked himself despondently. Would anything be any good? Was
not everything a failure? No one regarded him; Cross, the man whose
card he held, had not even glanced in his direction when he went down
the path. A miserable bargain-driving tradesman had passed him and
paid no more attention to him than if he had been a gardener! Gillat,
his own friend, did not regard him, thought nothing of his comforts;
he was all for Julia; thought of nothing and no one else. As for Julia
herself, she had not the slightest regard for him, no consideration,
not even filial respect and obedience.

He looked gloomily before him for a little, then his eye fell on the
white fragments he held, the address of the man who was anxious to buy
the daffodil which Julia in her obstinate folly and selfish
unreasonableness, would not sell. If it only were sold! He thought
over all the good things that could then be done; they were the same
as t