"No, he died a martyr to a holy cause. He had attached himself to a mission to the heathen, and succumbed to the climate."
"I can only say he might have done a cleverer thing!"
Leonie, who had just carried her handkerchief to her eyes, overcome with emotion, stopped, utterly shocked at his lack of feeling:
"Doctor!"
"Yes, I cannot help thinking so. Miss Friedberg. I deem it very superfluous, in the first place, to be going away off to Africa to convert the black heathen, while so many white heathens, are roving around here in Germany, who know nothing of Christianity, although they are baptized. If your cousin had preached the Word of God, as a well-installed pastor to his own people----"
"He was not a minister, but a teacher," the angry lady managed to put in.
"Never mind; then, emphatically, he should have taught the dear school-boys the fear of God and flogged them into it, too, if needful. Classes have little enough of that nowadays."
Leonie's face betrayed the indignation she felt at this mode of expression, but reply was spared her, however, for at this moment came a timid knock at the door, and immediately afterwards Dagobert entered, but was hardly allowed to pay his respects to the lady; his uncle calling out to him, in his threatening voice, just as soon as he laid eyes on him:
"No English lesson to-day. Miss Friedberg has just declared that she is 'nervous through and through,' and nerves and grammar do not agree."
The young man must have valued this instruction highly, for he was quite shocked at this announcement. But Leonie said most positively: