g on a brave
face with the neighbors, keeping the unwelcome sister-in-law in the
background.

It was bitterly cold, and Eva raged against the climate, the house,
the lack of a servant, the absence of gayety, and above all at the
prospect of motherhood. Her resentment against David, for some reason
unknown to Letty, was deep and profound and she made no secret of it;
until the outraged Letty, goaded into speech one day, said: "Listen,
Eva! David brought you here because his sister's house was the proper
place for you just now. I don't know why you married each other, but
you did, and it's evidently a failure. I'm going to stand by David and
see you through this trouble, but while you're under my roof you'll
have to speak respectfully of my brother; not so much because he's my
brother, but because he's your husband and the father of the child
that's coming:--do you understand?"

Letty had a good deal of red in her bronze hair and her brown eyes
were as capable of flashing fire as Eva's black ones; so the girl not
only refrained from venting her spleen upon the absent David, but
ceased to talk altogether, and the gloom in the house was as black as
if Mrs. Popham and all her despondent ancestors were living under its
roof.

The good doctor called often and did his best, shrugging his shoulders
and lifting his eyebrows as he said: "Let her work out her own
salvation. I doubt if she can, but we'll give her the chance. If the
problem can be solved, the child will do it."

[Illustration]

IV

Well, the problem never was solved, never in this world, at least; and
those who were in the sitting-room chamber when Eva was shown her two
babies lying side by side on a pillow, never forgot the quick glance
of horrified incredulity, or the shriek of aversion with which she
greeted them.

Letty had a sense of humor, and it must be confessed that when the
scorned and discarded babies were returned to her, and she sat by the
kitchen stove trying to plan a second bottle, a second cradle, and see
how far the expected baby could divide its modest outfit with the
unexpected one, she burst into a fit of hysterical laughter mingled
with an outpour of tears.

The doctor came in from the sick-room puzzled and crestfallen from his
interview with an entirely new specimen of woman-kind. He had brought
Letty and David into the world and soothed the last days of all her
family, and now in this tragedy--for tragedy it was--he was her