matter. If Mr. Cross goes in for those sort of
dealings he must put up with the consequence, and I am afraid you
must, too." And with that she went away.

This was the last reference that was made to the sale of the daffodil
and the expedition to town; after that the matter was left out of
conversation and Julia behaved as if it had never existed. But Captain
Polkington was very unhappy; he could not get over the affair and his
own failure; he brooded over it in silence, feeling and resenting that
he could not speak to either Johnny or Julia, they being quite unable
to understand his emotions. Once or twice he raged weakly against
Cross, who had given him five pounds when he had asked twenty for a
thing worth two hundred; who had doubted his word, who had behaved as
if he were a common thief--who would, doubtless, think him one. More
often his indignation burnt up against Julia who would do nothing to
remedy this last catastrophe, and clear him and reinstate his honour
in the eyes of this man and himself. Most often of all his quarrel was
with fate, and then his anger broke down into self-pity as he thought
of all the troubles that were crowding about his later years; of his
lost reputation, his lack of sympathy and comprehension; the failure
of all his plans and hopes, the poverty and feeble health that
oppressed him. In these gloomy days he had one ray of comfort only; it
lay in the purchase he had made on that day that he went shopping.
That whisky was the solitary thing in the day's adventure about which
Julia had not heard; everything else she had been told, but somehow
that had escaped. One reason of this, no doubt, lay in the fact that
Captain Polkington had not brought his purchase home with him that
evening. He had meant to; when the carrier set him and his property
down just outside Halgrave, he had fully meant to carry it to the
cottage. But he found it so heavy and cumbersome in his weak and
dejected state that he had to give it up. So he found a suitable
hiding-place in the deep overgrown ditch beside the road, and,
thrusting it as much out of sight as he could, left it there and went
home unburdened. He meant to tell Julia and Johnny about it, they of
course were to have shared, and one or both of them would go with him
to fetch it home in the morning. But he did not tell them; it did not
seem suitable at first; they, each in a different way, were too
unsympathetic about the expedition to town; he determin