During dinner they spoke English for the sake of the Captain and Mr. Gillat; Joost spoke well, if slowly, with a careful and accurate precision. He also observed much, both of outside things, as the fact that Johnny and the Captain cleared the table while Julia sat still, contrary to Dutch custom. And also of things less on the surface--as that Julia was head of the household and that Captain Polkington was not the impressive and authoritative person Mijnheer seemed to think. Concerning this last fact he made no remark when, on his return home, he described the ways and customs of Julia's cottage to his parents. The description served Mevrouw at least, as representative of all English households ever afterwards. When dinner was done and everything cleared up, or rather Julia's part, she took Joost into the garden. "Now," she said in Dutch, "let us come out and talk and look at things." They went out and he began to admire her orderly garden and to tell her why this plant had done well and that one had failed. He did not speak of the blue daffodil, he thought he could better ask about that a little later. She did not speak of it either by name; he and it were so inseparably connected in her mind. "Come along," she said, when he stopped to look into a tulip to see if its centre was as truly black as it should have been. "Come and see it." He followed her obediently, but asked what it was he was to see. "The blue daffodil, of course," she said. He stopped dead. "You have got it here?" he exclaimed. "You have not sold it?" "Certainly not." "But why--why?" he stared at her in amazement. "You wanted money, it was for that you wanted the bulb, to sell; you told me so. Do you not want money now?" "Oh, yes," Julia said; "but that is an incurable disease hereditary in our family." "You do want money?" he inquired mystified. "This inheritance is small, not enough? Why, then, did you not sell the bulb?" Julia shrugged her shoulders. "I could not very well," she said. "But why not? You thought to do so at one time; your intention was to sell it if you had--" "Stolen it? Yes, that is quite true, and it would not have mattered then. If I had stolen it I might as well have sold it; one dishonourable act feels lonely without another; it generally begets another to keep itself company." Joost looked at her uncomprehendingly. "But why," he persisted, clinging to the one thing he did understand, "why did you not sell it? It was for that I gave it to you, to do with as you pleased; I knew you would do only what was right and necessary." Julia could have smiled a little at this last word; it seemed as if even Joost had learnt to temper right with necessity to suit her dealings, but she only said, "That was one reason why I could not sell it. You expected me to do right, so I was obliged to do it; faith begets righteousness as dishonour begets dishonour." "I do not quite understand," he began, but she cut him short.