Mrs. Baker soon announced her departure, although she had intended to stay longer.
"I can't remain another minute," she said;
"I promised Mrs. Neil that I would stop in to see her to-day.
I'm sure I've bored you enough already as it is."
She walked to the door, not troubling to look at Jennie until she was nearly out of the room. Then she looked in her direction, and gave her a frigid nod.
"We meet such curious people now and again," she observed finally to her hostess as she swept away.
Mrs. Field did not feel able to defend Jennie, for she herself was in no notable social position, and was endeavoring, like every other middle-class woman of means, to get along.
She did not care to offend Mrs. Williston Baker, who was socially so much more important than Jennie.
She came back to where Jennie was sitting, smiling apologetically, but she was a little bit flustered.
Jennie was out of countenance, of course. Presently she excused herself and went home.
She had been cut deeply by the slight offered her, and she felt that Mrs. Field realized that she had made a mistake in ever taking her up.
There would be no additional exchange of visits there—that she knew.
The old hopeless feeling came over her that her life was a failure.
It couldn't be made right, or, if it could, it wouldn't be.
Lester was not inclined to marry her and put her right.
Time went on and matters remained very much as they were.
To look at this large house, with its smooth lawn and well grown trees, its vines clambering about the pillars of the veranda and interlacing themselves into a transparent veil of green; to see Gerhardt pottering about the yard, Vesta coming home from school, Lester leaving in the morning in his smart trap—one would have said that here is peace and plenty, no shadow of unhappiness hangs over this charming home.
And as a matter of fact existence with Lester and Jennie did run smoothly.
It is true that the neighbors did not call any more, or only a very few of them, and there was no social life to speak of; but the deprivation was hardly noticed; there was so much in the home life to please and interest.
Vesta was learning to play the piano, and to play quite well. She had a good ear for music.
Jennie was a charming figure in blue, lavender, and olive-green house-gowns as she went about her affairs, sewing, dusting, getting Vesta off to school, and seeing that things generally were put to rights.
Gerhardt busied himself about his multitudinous duties, for he was not satisfied unless he had his hands into all the domestic economies of the household.
One of his self-imposed tasks was to go about the house after Lester, or the servants, turning out the gas-jets or electric-light bulbs which might accidentally have been left burning. That was a sinful extravagance.
Again, Lester's expensive clothes, which he carelessly threw aside after a few month's use, were a source of woe to the thrifty old German.
Moreover, he grieved over splendid shoes discarded because of a few wrinkles in the leather or a slightly run down heel or sole.
Gerhardt was for having them repaired, but Lester answered the old man's querulous inquiry as to what was wrong "with them shoes" by saying that they weren't comfortable any more.
"Such extravagance!" Gerhardt complained to Jennie.
"Such waste!
No good can come of anything like that, It will mean want one of these days."
"He can't help it, papa," Jennie excused.
"That's the way he was raised."
"Ha! A fine way to be raised.
These Americans, they know nothing of economy.
They ought to live in Germany awhile. Then they would know what a dollar can do."
Lester heard something of this through Jennie, but he only smiled.
Gerhardt was amusing to him.
Another grievance was Lester's extravagant use of matches.
He had the habit of striking a match, holding it while he talked, instead of lighting his cigar, and then throwing it away.
Sometimes he would begin to light a cigar two or three minutes before he would actually do so, tossing aside match after match.
There was a place out in one corner of the veranda where he liked to sit of a spring or summer evening, smoking and throwing away half-burned matches. Jennie would sit with him, and a vast number of matches would be lit and flung out on the lawn.
At one time, while engaged in cutting the grass, Gerhardt found, to his horror, not a handful, but literally boxes of half-burned match-sticks lying unconsumed and decaying under the fallen blades.
He was discouraged, to say the least. He gathered up this damning evidence in a newspaper and carried it back into the sitting-room where Jennie was sewing.
"See here, what I find!" he demanded.
"Just look at that!
That man, he has no more sense of economy than a—than a—" the right term failed him.
"He sits and smokes, and this is the way he uses matches.
Five cents a box they cost—five cents.
How can a man hope to do well and carry on like that, I like to know.
Look at them."
Jennie looked. She shook her head.