Can't the girl have any pleasure at all?"
"But he is an old man," returned Gerhardt, voicing the words of Weaver.
"He is a public citizen.
What should he want to call on a girl like Jennie for?"
"I don't know," said Mrs. Gerhardt, defensively.
"He comes here to the house.
I don't know anything but good about the man.
Can I tell him not to come?"
Gerhardt paused at this. All that he knew of the Senator was excellent.
What was there now that was so terrible about it?
"The neighbors are so ready to talk.
They haven't got anything else to talk about now, so they talk about Jennie.
You know whether she is a good girl or not.
Why should they say such things?" and tears came into the soft little mother's eyes.
"That is all right," grumbled Gerhardt, "but he ought not to want to come around and take a girl of her age out walking.
It looks bad, even if he don't mean any harm."
At this moment Jennie came in.
She had heard the talking in the front bedroom, where she slept with one of the children, but had not suspected its import.
Now her mother turned her back and bent over the table where she was making biscuit, in order that her daughter might not see her red eyes.
"What's the matter?" she inquired, vaguely troubled by the tense stillness in the attitude of both her parents.
"Nothing," said Gerhardt firmly.
Mrs. Gerhardt made no sign, but her very immobility told something.
Jennie went over to her and quickly discovered that she had been weeping.
"What's the matter?" she repeated wonderingly, gazing at her father.
Gerhardt only stood there, his daughter's innocence dominating his terror of evil.
"What's the matter?" she urged softly of her mother.
"Oh, it's the neighbors," returned the mother brokenly.
"They're always ready to talk about something they don't know anything about."
"Is it me again?" inquired Jennie, her face flushing faintly.
"You see," observed Gerhardt, apparently addressing the world in general, "she knows.
Now, why didn't you tell me that he was coming here?
The neighbors talk, and I hear nothing about it until to-day.
What kind of a way is that, anyhow?"
"Oh," exclaimed Jennie, out of the purest sympathy for her mother, "what difference does it make?"
"What difference?" cried Gerhardt, still talking in German, although Jennie answered in English.
"Is it no difference that men stop me on the street and speak of it?
You should be ashamed of yourself to say that.
I always thought well of this man, but now, since you don't tell me about him, and the neighbors talk, I don't know what to think.
Must I get my knowledge of what is going on in my own home from my neighbors?"
Mother and daughter paused.
Jennie had already begun to think that their error was serious.
"I didn't keep anything from you because it was evil," she said.
"Why, he only took me out riding once."
"Yes, but you didn't tell me that," answered her father.
"You know you don't like for me to go out after dark," replied Jennie. "That's why I didn't. There wasn't anything else to hide about it."
"He shouldn't want you to go out after dark with him," observed Gerhardt, always mindful of the world outside.
"What can he want with you.
Why does he come here?
He is too old, anyhow.
I don't think you ought to have anything to do with him—such a young girl as you are."