In the drawing-room or library, before Vesta and Gerhardt, she was not less loving, though a little more circumspect. She loved odd puzzles like pigs in clover, the spider’s hole, baby billiards, and the like. Lester shared in these simple amusements. He would work by the hour, if necessary, to make a difficult puzzle come right. Jennie was clever at solving these mechanical problems. Sometimes she would have to show him the right method, and then she would be immensely pleased with herself. At other times she would stand behind him watching, her chin on his shoulder, her arms about his neck. He seemed not to mind—indeed, he was happy in the wealth of affection she bestowed. Her cleverness, her gentleness, her tact created an atmosphere which was immensely pleasing; above all her youth and beauty appealed to him. It made him feel young, and if there was one thing Lester objected to, it was the thought of drying up into an aimless old age. “I want to keep young, or die young,” was one of his pet remarks; and Jennie came to understand. She was glad that she was so much younger now for his sake. Another pleasant feature of the home life was Lester’s steadily increasing affection for Vesta. The child would sit at the big table in the library in the evening conning her books, while Jennie would sew, and Gerhardt would read his interminable list of German Lutheran papers. It grieved the old man that Vesta should not be allowed to go to a German Lutheran parochial school, but Lester would listen to nothing of the sort. “We’ll not have any thick-headed German training in this,” he said to Jennie, when she suggested that Gerhardt had complained. “The public schools are good enough for any child. You tell him to let her alone.” There were really some delightful hours among the four. Lester liked to take the little seven-year-old school-girl between his knees and tease her. He liked to invert the so-called facts of life, to propound its paradoxes, and watch how the child’s budding mind took them. “What’s water?” he would ask; and being informed that it was “what we drink,” he would stare and say, “That’s so, but what is it? Don’t they teach you any better than that?” “Well, it is what we drink, isn’t it?” persisted Vesta. “The fact that we drink it doesn’t explain what it is,” he would retort. “You ask your teacher what water is”; and then he would leave her with this irritating problem troubling her young soul.