messing about arter thaay? You'll never be no good on; you ain't never
got a apron on."

"But--just a minute now."

"Go on in, and be some use on."

Amaryllis' lip fell; she turned and walked slowly away along the path,
her head drooping forward.

Did ever anyone have a beautiful idea or feeling without being repulsed?

She had not reached the end of the path, however, when the father began
to change his attitude; he stood up, dropped his "dibbler," scraped his
foot on his spade, and, grumbling to himself, went after her. She did
not see or hear him till he overtook her.

"Please, I'll go and do the sewing," she said.

"Where be this yer flower?" gruffly.

"I'll show you," taking his ragged arm, and brightening up immediately.
"Only think, to open in all this wind, and so cold--isn't it beautiful?
It's much more beautiful than the flowers that come in the summer."

"Trumpery rubbish--mean to dig 'em all up--would if I had time,"
muttered the father. "Have 'em carted out and drowed away--do for ashes
to drow on the fields. Never no good on to nobody, thaay thengs. You
can't eat 'em, can you, like you can potatoes?"

"But it's lovely. Here it is," and Amaryllis stepped on the patch
tenderly, and lifted up the drooping face of the flower.

"Ah, yes," said Iden, putting his left hand to his chin, a habit of his
when thinking, and suddenly quite altering his pronunciation from that
of the country folk and labourers amongst whom he dwelt to the correct
accent of education. "Ah, yes; the daffodil was your great-uncle's
favourite flower."

"Richard?" asked Amaryllis.

"Richard," repeated Iden. And Amaryllis, noting how handsome her
father's intellectual face looked, wandered in her mind from the flower
as he talked, and marvelled how he could be so rough sometimes, and why
he talked like the labourers, and wore a ragged coat--he who was so full
of wisdom in his other moods, and spoke, and thought, and indeed acted
as a perfect gentleman.

"Richard's favourite flower," he went on. "He brought the daffodils down
from Luckett's; every one in the garden came from there. He was always
reading poetry, and writing, and sketching, and yet he was such a
capital man of business; no one could understand that. He built the
mill, and saved heaps of money; he bought back the old place at
Luckett's, which belonged to us before Queen Elizabeth's days; indeed,
he very nearly made up the fortunes Nicholas and the rest of them go