The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rügen

by Elizabeth Von Arnim

'Frühzeitige Väter?' I repeated dully; 'Who are they?'

The bishop's wife took the kindest view of it. 'Perhaps you do not have them in the Lutheran Church,' she said; but she did not speak to me again at all, turning her back on me quite this time, and wholly concentrating her attention on the monosyllabic Charlotte.

'My mother,' Ambrose explained in subdued tones, 'meant to say Kirchenväter.'

'I am sorry,' said I politely, 'that I was so dull.'

And then he went on with the paragraph—for to me it seemed as though he spoke always in entire paragraphs instead of sentences—he had been engaged upon when I interrupted him; and, for my refreshment, I caught fragments of Mrs. Harvey-Browne's conversation in between.

'I have a message for you, dear Frau Nieberlein,' I heard her say,—'a message from the bishop.'

'Yes?' said Charlotte, without warmth.

'We had letters from home to-day, and in his he mentions you.'

'Yes?' said Charlotte, ungratefully cold.

'"Tell her," he writes,—"tell her I have been reading her pamphlets."'