"Has he seen?"
Jennie paused as she realized from her mother's face and nod that Gerhardt knew of the child's existence.
"Go ahead," said Mrs. Gerhardt; "it's all right.
He won't say anything."
Jennie finally went to the door, and, seeing her father, his brow wrinkled as if in serious but not unkindly thought, she hesitated, but made her way forward.
"Papa," she said, unable to formulate a definite sentence.
Gerhardt looked up, his grayish-brown eyes a study under their heavy sandy lashes.
At the sight of his daughter he weakened internally; but with the self-adjusted armor of resolve about him he showed no sign of pleasure at seeing her.
All the forces of his conventional understanding of morality and his naturally sympathetic and fatherly disposition were battling within him, but, as in so many cases where the average mind is concerned, convention was temporarily the victor.
"Yes," he said.
"Won't you forgive me, Papa?"
"I do," he returned grimly.
She hesitated a moment, and then stepped forward, for what purpose he well understood.
"There," he said, pushing her gently away, as her lips barely touched his grizzled cheek.
It had been a frigid meeting.
When Jennie went out into the kitchen after this very trying ordeal she lifted her eyes to her waiting mother and tried to make it seem as though all had been well, but her emotional disposition got the better of her.
"Did he make up to you?" her mother was about to ask; but the words were only half out of her mouth before her daughter sank down into one of the chairs close to the kitchen table and, laying her head on her arm, burst forth into soft, convulsive, inaudible sobs.
"Now, now," said Mrs. Gerhardt.
"There now, don't cry.
What did he say?"
It was some time before Jennie recovered herself sufficiently to answer.
Her mother tried to treat the situation lightly.
"I wouldn't feel bad," she said.
"He'll get over it. It's his way."
CHAPTER XV
The return of Gerhardt brought forward the child question in all its bearings.
He could not help considering it from the standpoint of a grandparent, particularly since it was a human being possessed of a soul.
He wondered if it had been baptized.
Then he inquired.
"No, not yet," said his wife, who had not forgotten this duty, but had been uncertain whether the little one would be welcome in the faith.
"No, of course not," sneered Gerhardt, whose opinion of his wife's religious devotion was not any too great.
"Such carelessness!
Such irreligion!
That is a fine thing."
He thought it over a few moments, and felt that this evil should be corrected at once.
"It should be baptized," he said.
"Why don't she take it and have it baptized?"
Mrs. Gerhardt reminded him that some one would have to stand godfather to the child, and there was no way to have the ceremony performed without confessing the fact that it was without a legitimate father.
Gerhardt listened to this, and it quieted him for a few moments, but his religion was something which he could not see put in the background by any such difficulty.
How would the Lord look upon quibbling like this?
It was not Christian, and it was his duty to attend to the matter.
It must be taken, forthwith, to the church, Jennie, himself, and his wife accompanying it as sponsors; or, if he did not choose to condescend thus far to his daughter, he must see that it was baptized when she was not present.
He brooded over this difficulty, and finally decided that the ceremony should take place on one of these week-days between Christmas and New Year's, when Jennie would be at her work.
This proposal he broached to his wife, and, receiving her approval, he made his next announcement.
"It has no name," he said.
Jennie and her mother had talked over this very matter, and Jennie had expressed a preference for Vesta.
Now her mother made bold to suggest it as her own choice.
"How would Vesta do?"
Gerhardt heard this with indifference.
Secretly he had settled the question in his own mind.