“Why should you?” asked Letty, although her mind had leaped to the reason already.

“Well, I was a poor patient in one of the cheapest rooms; broken in health, without any present means of support.  I wanted to stand well with her, she had been so good to me, and I thought if she knew about the twins she wouldn’t believe I could ever make a living for three.”

“Still less for four!” put in Letty, with an irrepressible note of teasing in her tone.

She had broken the ice.  Like a torrent set free, David dashed into the story of the last two months and Ruth Bentley’s wonderful influence.  How she had recreated him within as well as without.  How she was the best and noblest of women, willing to take a pauper by the hand and brace him up for a new battle with life.

“Strength appeals to me,” confessed David.  “Perhaps it’s because I am weak; for I’m afraid I am, a little!”

“Be careful, Davy!  Eva was strong!”

David shuddered.  He remembered a strength that lashed and buffeted and struck and overpowered.

“Ruth is different,” he said. “’Out of the strong came forth sweetness’ used to be one of Parson Larrabee’s texts.  That’s Ruth’s kind of strength.—­Can I—­will you let me bring her here to see you, Letty,—­say for New Year’s?  It’s all so different from the last time I asked you.  Then I knew I was bringing you nothing but sorrow and pain, but Ruth carries her welcome in her face.”

The prop inside of Letty wavered unsteadily for a moment and then stood in its accustomed upright position.

“Why not?” she asked.  “It’s the right thing to do; but you must tell her about the children first.”

“Oh!  I did that long ago, after I found out that she cared.  It was only at first that I didn’t dare.  I haven’t told you, but she went out for her daily walk and brought me home a Christmas card, the prettiest one she could find, she said.  I was propped up on pillows, as weak as a kitten.  I looked at it and looked at it, and when I saw that it was this room, the old fireplace and mother’s picture, and the Hessian soldier andirons, when I realized there was a face at the window and that the door was ajar,—­everything just swam before me and I fainted dead away.  I had a relapse, and when I was better again I told her everything.  She’s fond of children.  It didn’t make any difference, except for her to say that the more she had to do for me, the more she wanted to do it.”

“Well,” said Letty with a break in her voice, “that’s love, so far as I can see, and if you’ve been lucky enough to win it, take it and be thankful, and above all, nurse and keep it.—­So one of Reba’s cards, the one the publisher thought would never sell, found you and brought you back!  How wonderful!  We little thought of that, Reba and I!”

“Reba’s work didn’t stop there, Letty!  There was so much that had to be said between you and me, just now, that I couldn’t let another subject creep in till it was finished and we were friends;—­but Dick Larrabee saw Reba’s card about ‘the folks back home’ in Chicago and he bought a ticket for Beulah just as I did.  We met in the train and compared notes.”