The next day it still rained, but a good deal harder. There was a sudden drop in the temperature, too, such as one often finds in an English summer. The Van Heigens did not have a fire on that account, their stoves always kept a four months' sabbath; the advent of a snow-storm in July would not have been allowed to break it. Mijnheer's cold was decidedly worse; towards evening it grew very bad. He came in early from the office, and sat and shivered in the sitting-room with Julia and his wife, who was continuing the crochet unaided, and so laying up much future work for Denah. At last it was considered dark enough for the lamp to be lighted. Julia got up and lit it, and drew the blind, shutting out the grey sheet of the canal and the slanting 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.