“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.”
“He doesn’t want to do anything except help me,” murmured Jennie. “He wants to marry me.”
“Marry you? Ha! Why doesn’t he tell me that!” exclaimed Gerhardt. “I shall look into this. I won’t have him running around with my daughter, and the neighbors talking. Besides, he is too old. I shall tell him that. He ought to know better than to put a girl where she gets talked about. It is better he should stay away altogether.”
This threat of Gerhardt’s, that he would tell Brander to stay away, seemed simply terrible to Jennie and to her mother. What good could come of any such attitude? Why must they be degraded before him? Of course Brander did call again, while Gerhardt was away at work, and they trembled lest the father should hear of it. A few days later the Senator came and took Jennie for a long walk. Neither she nor her mother said anything to Gerhardt. But he was not to be put off the scent for long.
“Has Jennie been out again with that man?” he inquired of Mrs. Gerhardt the next evening.
“He was here last night,” returned the mother, evasively.
“Did she tell him he shouldn’t come any more?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”