"Then you did find work and get on?" she exclaimed, with a bright, wistful look, that touched him very much.
"Didn't you get my letter?" he asked eagerly. "I sent you the first dollar I earned, and told you and the old lady I was all right."
Letty shook her head, and all the light passed out of her face, leaving it pathetic in its patient sorrow.
"Aunt Liddy died a week after you were there, so suddenly that every thing was in confusion, and I never got the letter. I wish she had known of it, because it would have pleased her so. We often talked about you and hoped you'd do well. We led such quiet lives, you see, that any little thing interested us for a long time."
"It was a little thing to you, I dare say; but it was salvation to me. Not the money or the food only, but the kindness of the old lady, and—and the look in your sweet face, miss. I'd got so far down, through sickness and bad luck, that there didn't seem any thing left for me but deviltry or death. That day it was a toss-up between any bad job that came along first and drowning, like my dog. That seemed sort of mean, though; and I felt more like being revenged somehow on the world, that had been so hard on me."
He stopped short, breathing hard, with a sudden spark in his black eyes and a nervous clenching of the strong hands that made Letty shrink; for he seemed to speak in spite of himself, as if the memory of that time had left its impress on his life.
"But you didn't do any thing bad. I'm sure you didn't; for Aunt Liddy said there was the making of a man in you, because you were so quick to feel a little bit of kindness and take good advice."
The soft, eager voice of the girl seemed to work the miracle anew, for a smile broke over his face, the angry spark was quenched, and the clenched hand opened to offer again all it had to give, as he said, with a characteristic mingling of fun and feeling in his voice,—
"I don't know much about angels; but I felt as if I'd met a couple that day, for they saved me from destruction. You cast your bread upon the waters, and it's come back when, maybe, you need it 'most as much as I did then. 'Tisn't half as nice as yours; but perhaps a blessing will do as well as butter."
Letty took the brown bread, feeling that he had said the best grace over it; and while she ate he talked, evidently moved to open his heart by the memory of the past, and eager to show that he had manfully persisted in the well-doing his angels had advised.