“Thank you, Ursula. I am afraid I was rude to you just now. I have no wish to be rude to you, nor to any one. It is not in my nature to be rude. But this news from Acheen has excited me. I am not as young as I was”—she peered across, with a quick glance of anxiety, at her daughter-in-law—“yet I am thankful to reflect that Gerard, when he comes, will find me but very little changed.”
The Freule Louisa came in. “Have you heard?” she asked. “Now, that’s the kind of thing I like, and I never expected it of Gerard. I always thought Gerard was a bit of a coward, a curled darling of the drawing-room, like Plush. Didn’t you, Ursula?”
“No, indeed,” replied Ursula.
Freule Louisa giggled suddenly. “Well, I dare say you knew better,” she said. “Only I hope he won’t come back too soon.”
“Why? What?” exclaimed the Dowager. Ursula had left the room.
“Because Tryphena has just sent him out a large box of Javanese tracts to get distributed among the enemy. We feel that the Achinese should not be killed, but Christianized. Ursula’s father behaved very badly about the tracts. He said that the only way to get them ‘sent on’ would be for the soldiers to wrap their bullets in them. Scandalous, for a Christian minister, and so I told Josine.”
“Louisa—”
“And he says, besides, that the Achinese don’t know the language.”
“Louisa—”
“As if they couldn’t learn. I dare say there isn’t much difference.”