“I am glad you told me,” he murmured as he started homeward. “I will see about it. Good-by.”
Gerhardt took the first opportunity to question his wife.
“What is this about Senator Brander coming out to call on Jennie?” he asked in German. “The neighbors are talking about it.”
“Why, nothing,” answered Mrs. Gerhardt, in the same language. She was decidedly taken aback at his question. “He did call two or three times.”
“You didn’t tell me that,” he returned, a sense of her frailty in tolerating and shielding such weakness in one of their children irritating him.
“No,” she replied, absolutely nonplussed. “He has only been here two or three times.”
“Two or three times!” exclaimed Gerhardt, the German tendency to talk loud coming upon him. “Two or three times! The whole neighborhood talks about it. What is this, then?”
“He only called two or three times,” Mrs. Gerhardt repeated weakly.
“Weaver comes to me on the street,” continued Gerhardt, “and tells me that my neighbors are talking of the man my daughter is going with. I didn’t know anything about it. There I stood. I didn’t know what to say. What kind of a way is that? What must the man think of me?”
“There is nothing the matter,” declared the mother, using an effective German idiom. “Jennie has gone walking with him once or twice. He has called here at the house. What is there now in that for the people to talk about? Can’t the girl have any pleasure at all?”