Achmed Abdullah

“ I always am when a German, chiefly an officer or a Government official, asks me to remember that I am a native of Germany. There is always a reason for that bit of clanking sentimentality, and that reason is always fishy. So I decided to be careful, the more so as Newson Garrett told me that he had sent specimens of the ore to a German chemist in New York for further examination, as you had received a cable from Johannes Hirschfeld & Co. in Berlin offering you a tremendously big price for the mine, and as Truex, too, had received a similar cable. ”

“ Tom! Uncle never mailed any of my letters! I am sure of it!"
"Heavens! What did you do, Bertha? Didn't you kick up a ..."
"A row? No."
"Why not?"
"I was taken aback. I was frightened, so frightened. I rushed into grandmother's room and told her. And she made me promise not to say a word to uncle. She told me she couldn't explain to me, that I was an American, that I did not know Germany, the German army, the German system. She said to give her time. She herself would arrange matters."
"Why didn't you come to me—at once?" Tom was hurt. ”

“ And, Tom dear," she added with a pathetic little sigh, "I always imagined that I was so thoroughly German!"
Tom could not suppress a smile.
"Little error of judgment," he said. "Happens in the best regulated families. What else did your Dad say?"
"He enclosed another letter in grandmother's—for you. Grandmother believes he must have been afraid to write to you direct."
Tom gave a little exclamation of approval.
"Some little gray matter your father's got! All right. Let's have his letter to me."
Bertha gave it to him, and he read. ”