268 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 



on the patch tenderly, and Ufted 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 got 

 rid of. He was, indeed, a man. And now it is all 

 going again — faster than he made it. He used to take 

 you on his knee and say you would walk well, because 

 you had a good ankle." 



' Amaryllis blushed and smoothed her dress with her 

 hands, as if that would lengthen the skirt and hide the 

 ankles which Richard, the great-uncle, had admired when 

 she was a child, being a man, but which her feminine 

 acquaintances told her were heavy. 



' " Here, put on your hat and scarf ; how foolish of you 

 to go out in this wind without them !" said Mrs. Iden, 

 coming out. She thrust them into Amaryllis' unwilling 

 hands, and retired indoors again immediately. 



