“I don’t think I understand.”
Fred thought his German must be at fault.
“Well, I don’t know,” he said, “‘Sontags-schule,’ that’s what they call it in New York. I’ve seen it on the German churches.”
“New York? what is that?”
Fred gazed in greater astonishment.
“Now you don’t mean to say you don’t know where New York is?”
The girl shook her head in a dreamy, abstracted way.
“I have heard of Hameln,” she said, “and Hanover, and Jerusalem where the Holy Sepulchre is. It was there the Count Rudolph went to war against the Turks. But he never came back. Do you know,” eagerly, “whether the Christians have taken Jerusalem?”
“My gracious!” exclaimed Fred below his breath, “it must be a lunatic asylum!” Then aloud: “Why there hasn’t been a war in Jerusalem for five hundred years—not since the crusades.”