dollars Mrs. Gerhardt was transported
with joy.

"Oh," said Jennie, "I didn't know until I got outside that it was
so much. He said I should give it to you."

Mrs. Gerhardt took it, and holding it loosely in her folded hands,
saw distinctly before her the tall Senator with his fine manners.

"What a fine man he is!" she said. "He has a good heart."

Frequently throughout the evening and the next day Mrs. Gerhardt
commented upon this wonderful treasure-trove, repeating again and
again how good he must be or how large must be his heart. When it came
to washing his clothes she almost rubbed them to pieces, feeling that
whatever she did she could scarcely do enough. Gerhardt was not to
know. He had such stern views about accepting money without earning it
that even in their distress, she would have experienced some
difficulty in getting him to take it. Consequently she said nothing,
but used it to buy bread and meat, and going as it did such a little
way, the sudden windfall was never noticed.

Jennie, from now on, reflected this attitude toward the Senator,
and, feeling so grateful toward him, she began to talk more freely.
They came to be on such good terms that he gave her a little leather
picture-case from his dresser which he had observed her admiring.
Every time she came he found excuse to detain her, and soon discovered
that, for all her soft girlishness, there lay deep-seated in her a
conscious deprecation of poverty and a shame of having to own any
need. He honestly admired her for this, and, seeing that her clothes
were poor and her shoes worn, he began to wonder how he could help her
without offending.

Not infrequently he thought to follow her some evening, and see for
himself what the condition of the family might be. He was a United
States Senator, however. The neighborhood they lived in must be very
poor. He stopped to consider, and for the time the counsels of
prudence prevailed. Consequently the contemplated visit was put
off.

Early in December Senator Brander returned to Washington for three
weeks, and both Mrs. Gerhardt and Jennie were surprised to learn one
day that he had gone. Never had he given them less than two dollars a
week for his washing, and several times it had been five. He had not
realized, perhaps, what a breach his absence would make in their
finances. But there was nothing to do about it; they managed to pinch
along. Gerhardt, now better, searched for work at the various mills,