Johnny looked up in mild surprise; he had been to the outhouse that morning to see if the bulbs were keeping dry. "Why," he said, "it's in the shed!"
"No, it is not," Julia answered, "and it never was. The one you think it is one of the large double pale ones; I told you at the time we put them away, but you have got mixed, I expect."
"Ah, yes, of course," Mr. Gillat said; "I remember now; of course, I remember."
The Captain swallowed something, but contrived to keep quiet, and only darted a glance at Johnny, the muddler, whose information could never be depended on.
When the meal was over and Mr. Gillat in the back kitchen, Captain Polkington spoke to his daughter.
"Julia," he said, moistening his dry lips, "that man Cross thought it was the streaked daffodil that I, that--"
His voice tailed away, but Julia only said, "Well?"
"I pledged by word of honour that it was the true one."
She showed no signs of grasping his meaning or at all events of helping him out. He burst out irritably, "What on earth have you sold it for? Nothing would induce you to do so before when I asked you to; now, all at once you have taken a freak and parted with it without any consideration whatever. I never saw anything like women, so utterly irrational!"
"I have not sold it," Julia told him; "only sent it away."
"What for? It is perfectly absurd! I suppose you can get it back? You must get it back."
The Captain enlightened her. "There is Cross," he said; "I told him that was the daffodil, and it is not. Something must be done; we can't cheat him; we must send him the daffodil, or else refund the five pounds. We should have to do that--and we can't."
"No," Julia agreed grimly; "and we would not if we could."
"But what are you going to do?" her father asked.
"Nothing! But I pledged my word! You don't understand, I am in honour bound."
Julia forbore to make and comment on her father's notion of honour; indeed, it struck her as almost pathetic in its grotesqueness and certainly very characteristic of the Polkingtons.
"Cross paid five pounds for the streaked daffodil," the Captain went on to say, believing that he was stating the case with incontrovertible plainness, "and if he does not have the true bulb he must have the money back; otherwise he will, with justice, say he has been cheated, for I guaranteed the thing."