“Well, Breck,” said she, “do you think you are going to like my house, and my little boys?  Will you give Aunt Rachael a kiss?”

Billy said nothing as the child embraced his new-found relative heartily, nor when Rachael took her upstairs to show her the third hammock between the other two, and herself invested the visitor in blue overalls and a wide hat.  But late that evening, after a silence, she said suddenly: 

“You’re more charming than ever, Rachael; you’re one of the sweetest women I ever saw!”

“Thank you!” Rachael said with a little note of real pleasure under her laugh.

“You’ve grown so gentle, and good,” said Billy a little awkwardly.  “Perhaps it’s just because you’re so sweet to Breck, and because you have such a nice way with children, but I—­I am ever and ever so grateful to you!  I’ve often thought of you, all this time, and of the old days, and been glad that so much happiness of every sort has come to you.  At first I felt dreadfully—­at that time, you know—­”

She stopped and faltered, but Rachael looked at her kindly.  They were sitting on the wide porch, under the velvet-black arch of the starry sky, and watching the occasional twinkle of lights on the dark surface of the bay.

“You may say anything you like to me, Billy,” Rachael said.

“Well, it was only—­you know how I loved him—­” Billy said quickly.  “I’ve so often thought that perhaps you were the only person who knew what it all meant to me.  I only thought he would be angry for a while.  I thought then that Joe would surely win him.  And afterward, I thought I would go crazy, thinking of him sitting there in the club.  I had failed him, you know!  I’ve never talked about it.  I guess I’m all tired out from the trip down.”

It was clumsily expressed; the words came as if every one were wrung from the jealous silence of the long years, but presently Billy was beside Rachael’s chair, kneeling on the floor, and their arms were about each other.

“I killed him!” sobbed Billy.  “He spoke of me the last of all.  He said to Berry Stokes that he—­he loved me.  And he had a little old picture of me—­you remember the one in the daisy frame?—­over his heart.  Oh, Daddy, Daddy!—­always so good to me!”

“No, Bill, you mustn’t say that you killed him,” Rachael said, turning pale.  “If you were to blame, I was, too, and your grandmother, and all of us who made him what he was.  I didn’t love him when I married him, and he was the sort of man who has to be loved; he knew he wasn’t big, and admirable, and strong, but many a man like Clancy has been made so, been made worth while, by having a woman believe in him.  I never believed in him for one second, and he knew it.  I despised him, and where he sputtered and stammered and raged, I was cool and quiet, and smiling at him.  It isn’t right for human beings to feel that way, I see it now.  I see now that love—­love is the lubricant everywhere in the world, Bill.  One needn’t be a fool and be stepped upon; one has rights; but if loving enough goes into everything, why, it’s bound to come out right.”