ss, "but I'll let her know." Jennie wrote each one
personally. From Veronica and Martha she received brief replies. They
were very sorry, and would she let them know if anything happened.
George wrote that he could not think of coming to Chicago unless his
father was very ill indeed, but that he would like to be informed from
time to time how he was getting along. William, as he told Jennie some
time afterward, did not get her letter.

The progress of the old German's malady toward final dissolution
preyed greatly on Jennie's mind; for, in spite of the fact that they
had been so far apart in times past, they had now grown very close
together. Gerhardt had come to realize clearly that his outcast
daughter was goodness itself--at least, so far as he was
concerned. She never quarreled with him, never crossed him in any way.
Now that he was sick, she was in and out of his room a dozen times in
an evening or an afternoon, seeing whether he was "all right," asking
how he liked his breakfast, or his lunch, or his dinner. As he grew
weaker she would sit by him and read, or do her sewing in his room.
One day when she was straightening his pillow he took her hand and
kissed it. He was feeling very weak--and despondent. She looked
up in astonishment, a lump in her throat. There were tears in his
eyes.

"You're a good girl, Jennie," he said brokenly. "You've been good
to me. I've been hard and cross, but I'm an old man. You forgive me,
don't you?"

"Oh, papa, please don't," she pleaded, tears welling from her eyes.
"You know I have nothing to forgive. I'm the one who has been all
wrong."

"No, no," he said; and she sank down on her knees beside him and
cried. He put his thin, yellow hand on her hair. "There, there," he
said brokenly, "I understand a lot of things I didn't. We get wiser as
we get older."

She left the room, ostensibly to wash her face and hands, and cried
her eyes out. Was he really forgiving her at last? And she had lied to
him so! She tried to be more attentive, but that was impossible. But
after this reconciliation he seemed happier and more contented, and
they spent a number of happy hours together, just talking. Once he
said to her, "You know I feel just like I did when I was a boy. If it
wasn't for my bones I could get up and dance on the grass."

Jennie fairly smiled and sobbed in one breath. "You'll get
stronger, papa," she said. "You're going to get well. Then I'll take
you out driving." She was so