CHAPTER VII.

THE MISSION MEETING.

SATURDAY came, and with it the missionary meeting. Therese had not yet recovered her senses, but there were signs of improvement. Her pulse was better, and she swallowed what was put in her mouth.

"Oh, I do hope she will live," said Marion as she slipped into the room and stood looking at her playmate. "How pale she has grown!"

"That is a good sign," said the doctor.

"Don't you think she will live, Uncle Duncan?"

"I cannot tell, Marion; I hope she may, unless her mind should prove to be hopelessly gone. That has been my fear from the first. In that case we can hardly wish for her life, for we have reason to believe that she is prepared for death."

"I should not have thought that Therese had so much feeling," observed Marion, "she always seemed so lively and cheerful. Some girls in her situation would never have held their heads up at all, but Therese was always ready to help in any fun that was going on. If I had been in her place, my spirits would have been so depressed I should not have been able to enjoy anything."

Doctor Campbell smiled a queer little smile which at once set Marion to thinking whether she had said anything which her uncle could think silly.

"If you were burdened with any great trouble, you would find, my dear, that you could not afford to be depressed. Really afflicted people are seldom what is called low spirited. They cannot afford it. Depression of spirits properly so called usually comes from derangement of the liver."

"Just like a doctor," thought Marion. "Don't you mean to go down to the meeting, Uncle Duncan?" she asked, aloud. "Mrs. Parmalee expects you at least to tea, you know."

"Mrs. Parmalee must excuse me," answered the doctor; "I think this afternoon will be the turning-point with my patient, and I do not like to leave her."

"Is Uncle Duncan always so much interested in his patients?" asked Marion of her aunt as they walked down toward the village.

"Why, hardly," answered Mrs. Campbell, smiling. "If, for instance, I had a severe cold in my head, I should hardly expect the doctor to stay at home for me. He is naturally much interested for Therese, both because it is a remarkable case and because she is an unusually bright and interesting girl placed in very unhappy circumstances. I suppose Duncan would do his duty by a patient in any case, but you can hardly expect him to feel exactly the same amount of personal interest for them all."

Marion said no more, but walked on, considering whether she would not have the heiress of McGregor deserted by all her friends and left to the care of strangers in a brain fever, or whether a lingering consumption would not be more interesting.

When they arrived at the parsonage, they found the roomy parlours filled to overflowing. All the district school girls were present. Even Matty McRae had not been able to keep to her resolution of staying away, though she had done all the mischief in her power by repeating the story of Marion's watch to every one she could get to listen to her. Almost all the girls belonging to the missionary society had brought their work, and there was a great deal of talk going on, which ceased on the entrance of Mrs. Campbell and Marion.

Mrs. Campbell went round among the girls, speaking to those she knew and admiring the work, some of which was indeed remarkably pretty.

"How is Therese to-day?" asked Kitty as soon as she could get hold of Marion.

"Uncle Duncan thinks she is better, but I can't see any change in her," answered Marion, rather pettishly. She had been very sorry for Therese at first, but latterly she had begun to feel that the sick girl was attracting rather more than her share of interest. "She can swallow and she has grown pale and shuts her eyes, and Uncle Duncan says they are all good signs. I don't believe but that she might be roused if Uncle Duncan would let anybody try, but he won't."

"Of course he knows best," said Kitty. "Oh, I do hope she will get well."

"I'm sure I hope she will, for it isn't very convenient having her sick at our house so long," returned Marion. And then, feeling that this was not a very amiable speech, she added, hastily, "Of course I don't mind it myself, but it makes so much more work for Aunt Baby."

"Of course mamma will take her home as soon as Dr. Campbell thinks she can be moved safely," said Kitty. She turned away as she spoke, and Marion, as usual, began to wish her words unsaid.

If she had considered her words as much before she spoke as she did afterward, she would have saved herself and other people a great deal of trouble.

"And now what do you wish most to hear about?" asked Mrs. Campbell as soon as she had found a seat between the folding-doors where she could see everybody. There was a short silence, and then one of the little girls said, "Everything, please."

"But I can't tell everything at once, you know," said Mrs. Campbell, smiling. "Where shall I begin?"

"With little Rachel, please, Mrs. Campbell," said Lizzy Gates, who was apt to be the spokesman wherever she was, not from any particular forwardness, but because, as she expressed it, she "could never see anything waiting to be done without trying to do it." "Please to tell the girls the story you told me the other day up at your house about how Dr. Campbell found Rachel in the first place."

"Very well; I suppose I may as well begin there as anywhere. If I do not tell you what you wish to know, you must ask questions."

I shall not attempt to give the substance of Mrs. Campbell's little lecture, interesting as it was. When she came to a conclusion, there was a general cry of—

"Oh, Mrs. Campbell, don't stop. Go on, please."

"My dear girls, my lungs are not made of cast iron," said Mrs. Campbell, smiling, "and I think you have had a pretty long 'screed,' as my father would say. Do you know that I have been talking to you for more than two hours?"

"It doesn't seem possible," said Laura Bryant, who had heretofore taken very little interest in the missionary society. "It does not seem any time at all."

"That is a very pretty compliment, my dear."

"It wasn't a compliment, it was true," answered Laura, bluntly.

"Compliments may be true as well as false, Laura. If I should say you were a very attentive listener, that would be a compliment, but it would also be true."

Laura hardly knew whether to be pleased or not. She was not accustomed to politeness, or even civility, at home. All the Bryants thought they showed their sincerity by being blunt and rude and saying the most disagreeable things possible, especially to each other. Nevertheless, she felt, as everybody must, the charm of sincere good breeding.

"What I like is that you make everything so real," said she. "When I read of such things in books, they never do seem real. I cannot make myself believe that these Turks and Syrians and Arabs are people having the same feelings as we have."

"I know," observed Lizzy. "I have had the same feelings about places I have never seen. I am not quite sure that I really believe in China, after all."

"You are like the old lady who said it had never been revealed to her that there was such a place as Jerusalem," said Mrs. Campbell. "I believe many people have the same feeling. It is one of the difficulties which the mission boards have to contend with. There are numbers who would be ready to give if they could only see the need with their own eyes, but they cannot do that, and it has never been 'revealed' to them that there are any such places or people or things as the missionary papers tell them of. That power of realization is one of the many uses of imagination."

"I never thought of that," said Emily Sibley, a grave, pale, prim-looking girl, one of the oldest in the school. "I always supposed imagination was something to be put down—a kind of disease of the mind."

"Not at all, my dear. Imagination is as much a faculty of the mind as reason. Like that, it should be regulated and controlled and sanctified, but no more 'put down' than reason should be 'put down.'"

"My father don't believe in missions, any way," said Matty McRae, who had listened in spite of herself. "He says the churches go running about after foreign missions and such stuff, and neglect the poor at their own door, and that every dollar given to the heathen takes five dollars to send it."

"If your father will take pains to inquire for himself, Matty, he will find both these statements untrue," answered Mrs. Campbell. "He will find that the churches which do and give the most for foreign missions are those which are most active and generous in all kinds of charitable work at home, and that the statement about the money is quite as incorrect as the other."

"Why don't some one disprove them, then?" asked Lizzy.

"They have been disproved over and over again, but that does not prevent their being repeated on every occasion."

There was a little whispering in one corner, and somebody said, as if speaking a little louder than she meant,—

"Yes, I will ask her too; I want to know how it was."

"Ask her what?" said Mrs. Campbell.

Little Mary McIntyre stood forward, flushed and rather scared, but evidently determined to know the truth.

"Well, Mrs. Campbell, I don't know but you'll think me impudent, but I don't mean to be, so I hope you'll excuse me."

"I will when I know what there is to excuse."

"Well, somebody has been telling everybody that you gave Marion a present of a watch that cost more than a hundred dollars, and folks say—some folks do—that they won't give money to missionaries to buy gold watches with. And I thought I would just ask you how it really was."

"Quite right, Mary. I will answer your question to the best of my ability. In the first place, the watch did not cost a hundred dollars, but only sixty. Secondly, it was given to Marion, not by me, but by Mr. Van Alstine, her stepfather, who is a quite wealthy man. Thirdly, supposing I had given my niece a gold watch, it would by no means follow that the cause of missions was any poorer. Mr. McRae is agent for a sewing-machine factory; but if he should give Matty a watch, nobody would have a right to suppose that he paid for it with his employers' money. That would be a very unkind and uncharitable conclusion."

Mrs. Campbell had known nothing about Matty's connection with the story of the gold watch. She was therefore very much surprised when all the girls looked at her significantly and Matty coloured and looked just ready to cry. She saw that there was something amiss, and with her usual ready tact she hastened to change the conversation.

"Suppose any one wished to be a missionary; what would be the best way of going to work to get ready, Mrs. Campbell?" asked Emily Sibley.

"I hardly know how to answer you except by saying that the better you are prepared for usefulness at home, the more useful you are likely to be abroad. Some experience in teaching is very desirable, and a district school or a class in Sunday school is a very good training. Then one should be well acquainted with the best methods of doing all sorts of household work; and, in short, usefulness in the home-field is the best preparation for usefulness in the other."

"Now, really, my dear girls, you must not quite eat Mrs. Campbell up at one meal," said lively little Mrs. Parmalee, coming into the room presently. "Consider that you have kept her on the stretch for three mortal hours. Now put away your work and come and have some tea. You have learned as much as you can remember, I am sure."

"We have not been learning at all," said Mary McIntyre, indignantly. "It has been just as interesting as it could be."

"Mary doesn't go to the Crocker school, that's certain," said Lizzy, joining in the universal laugh. "Never mind, Molly; some time or other you will find out that learning can be interesting. Oh, there! Don't cry," as the sensitive little girl's cheeks grew scarlet and her eyes overflowed. "There was not a bit of harm in what you said, and the girls were not laughing at you at all. Were we, girls?"

"No, of course not," said Kitty. "I remember when I used to have the same feeling when mamma was sick so long in Paris, and I had Miss Milliken for a governess. She meant to be good, and she was, but oh, so dry. I was reading the 'Tales of a Grandfather' for my English lesson, and she made it as dry as the Fourth Reader."

"How fond Kitty is of talking about the time when she was in Paris!" said Laura to Marion in a whisper. "She thinks she is ever so much better than the rest of us because she has been abroad," continued Laura. "Mother says she shouldn't think the Tremaines would want to say much about that, because Mr. Tremaine gambled away all his wife's property there. I do hate such stuck-up, aristocratic folks, don't you?"

The conversation was interrupted by a call to tea. It was the custom in Holford on all such occasions for the ladies of the congregation to send in refreshments. The table was bountifully supplied with all sorts of good things, to which the girls were fully prepared to do justice. They all stood round the room, while Lizzy Gates, Kitty, and two or three others waited upon them, and there was a great deal of eating, laughing, and talking. Marion was one of the waiters, and after the rest had finished sat down with them to "eat her supper in peace," as Lizzy said.

"Oh, Mrs. Campbell, please stay with us," said Kitty; "I think we have earned that privilege by our arduous labour. Don't you, girls?"

"Yes, indeed," was the general answer.

And Mrs. Campbell, nothing loth, sat down again. She was fond of the society of young people, and naturally gratified by the interest shown in what was most interesting to her. She had been at a good deal of pains, and had spent valuable time which she could ill spare in writing letters to the little missionary society in Holford; and taking Marion as an index of the state of feeling among its members, she had been vexed and disappointed by the apparent indifference.

"Girls, we ought not to ask her another single question," said Kitty at last; "it is a shame to make her talk so much, when she is so tired. Marion, I shouldn't think you would ever know when to stop."

Marion coloured, conscious that she had hardly even made a beginning.

"What a pity poor Therese could not been here!" said Lizzy. "She would have had more questions to ask than anybody. I think Therese would make a good missionary."

"Is Therese a religious girl?" asked Mrs. Campbell.

"Oh yes, indeed, Mrs. Campbell," answered Kitty, eagerly. "I do think she is a real Christian, and mamma says so too. She is so faithful about everything. I do think she makes a conscience of the least thing she undertakes."

"That is a good trait, certainly," said Mrs. Campbell.

"And then she is so much in earnest about everything she does," added Lizzy. "Oh, she is a splendid girl; I do hope she will get well."

"Mamma says Therese has great talents," observed Kitty; "she says she never knew a girl on whom a thoroughly good education could be better bestowed, and that it is a pity she should not have the chances some girls are throwing away."

"Why doesn't your mother send her to school, then?" asked Marion.

"She cannot afford it," answered Kitty, simply. "You know we are not rich at all, and mother could not afford to keep Therese unless she saved her the expense of another girl. If it were only Therese, we might do it, but we have to help other people who have more claims upon us. I wish it was different, I am sure, for I love Therese dearly."

"Therese thinks she has a splendid chance," said Lizzy; "she told Marion and me so that very day she was taken sick. Don't you remember, Marion? She said she was just as happy as she could be, and that there were very few girls who had as good a chance as hers."

"I am glad she thinks so, I am sure," said Kitty; "we do help her all we can."

"I'm sure I wish I had somebody to help me," said little Mary McIntyre, who was one of the party and had hitherto listened in silence to the conversation. "You wouldn't laugh at what I said about learning, girls, if you went to school to Miss Smith. She does make everything so stupid, and she says I ask frivolous and foolish questions because I want to know about the people who live in the countries in the geography," continued Mary, forgetting her shyness in the recital of her wrongs; "and for my part, I think it is quite as important to know who lives along the rivers is to know just how long and how wide they are."

"You must consider, my dear, that Miss Smith has a good deal to do," said Mrs. Campbell, sympathizing with the little girl; "but, Mary, if Miss Smith does not answer your questions, you should try to find out in other ways. You must use the opportunities you have, and you will find that others will grow out of them. But, my dear girls, doesn't it strike you that we have been sitting an unconscionable time at the table, and that our friends will wonder what has become of us? I think we had better return to the drawing-room."

"Hasn't it been a delightful time?" said Kitty to Marion as they were putting on their hats to go home. "I don't think I ever spent a pleasanter afternoon in my life. Your aunt is so interesting."

Marion assented rather languidly. She had not enjoyed the afternoon, and was glad when it was over. Marion had, somehow or other expected to have her own consequence greatly enhanced by her aunt's coming. Mrs. Campbell was her property, and should have reflected credit upon her. But nobody had seemed to think of Marion at all. She was only a girl among the rest of the girls, and no one treated her with any more consideration than if she had been little Mary McIntyre.

"Marion," suddenly exclaimed her aunt as they were slowly and rather silently walking homeward in the twilight—the "gloaming" Hector McGregor would have called it—"how came you to give the girls the idea that I did not want anything said or any questions asked about the subject of our mission before the lecture?"

"I don't know, I am sure," answered Marion; "I got the idea from you somehow, and I thought myself the lecture would be more interesting if it was all new to them."

"You gave them a false impression," said Mrs. Campbell, "and me also. I thought the girls cared nothing about the matter, and I was very much hurt that it should be so after all the pains I had taken. You ought to be very careful in such matters."

"I am sure I did not mean any harm," said Marion, with a sigh.

"And you did not do any, as it turned out, but you might have done a great deal," said Mrs. Campbell. "You see how the story has gone about your watch. Do you know who began that?"

"It was Matty McRae herself," said Marion, laughing and forgetting her own annoyance for the moment in the remembrance of Matty's discomfiture. "Didn't you see how all the girls looked at her?"

"I thought I noticed something peculiar," said Mrs. Campbell. "Poor child! I did not mean to mortify her so. I mentioned her father because he was the only agent I could think of at the moment."

"I should think you would be glad," said Marion. "I am sure she deserved it for telling the stories she told."

"I dare say she did, but still I am sorry. It seldom does people good to hurt their feelings."

"I am sure I wish people would remember that where I am concerned," said Marion, with another sigh.

"Why, who hurts your feelings, Marion? I thought everybody was very considerate and kind to you," said Mrs. Campbell.

"If it was you, Aunt Christian, you wouldn't think so," said Marion, with another sigh.

"Perhaps you are too easily hurt."

"I dare say I am. I know I am very sensitive, and am hurt by a great many things which other people don't mind at all."

"If that is the case, there must be something wrong," said Mrs. Campbell. "A sore spot is usually a diseased spot and needs to be cured."

"I don't understand you, Aunt Christian."

"Why, if your finger is sore, you know that something is the matter with it," said Christian. "Anybody's hand may be hurt by a hot iron or by being pinched in a door; but if you shrink from having your hand touched, or even looked at, you must know that it needs the doctor."

"And what do you think is the best cure for over-sensitiveness, aunt, supposing that I am over-sensitive?"

"I think usually the best cure lies in removing the cause of the disease."

"What is the cause?"

"It is different, of course, in different cases. As often as any way, perhaps oftener, it arises from too much thinking about ourselves."

"I don't think I am so very self-conceited," said Marion, in an offended tone.

"I did not use the word 'self-conceited,' I believe, my dear. There are different ways of thinking about ourselves, and I was going to say that they are almost all equally bad. That would be going too far, but I do think the true remedy for over-sensitiveness is self-forgetfulness."

"I don't see how one would go to work to forget one's self."

"In various ways. Instead of thinking what others ought to do for you, busy yourself in thinking what you ought to do for them. Instead of dwelling on your own feelings, put them aside and try to enter into the pursuits of other people. In short, to sum up all in a little, 'Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.' 'For even Christ pleased not himself.' See, here is Uncle Duncan coming to meet us, and he looks as if he had good news. I hope poor Therese is better. Well, Duncan?"

"Therese has opened her eyes and spoken," said Doctor Campbell. "She is quite rational; and if we can only tide her over the dangerous time, she will do well."

"What do you mean by the 'dangerous time,' Uncle Duncan?" asked Marion.

"The time when she shall begin to remember," answered Doctor Campbell. "Barbara is sitting with her; and, Marion, my dear, you must try to do up the work and attend to everything about the house, so as to leave your aunt at liberty to sit with Therese."

"Yes, that is always the way. The drudgery always comes to my share," thought Marion, indignantly. "Just as if I could not sit with Therese and manage her just as well as Aunt Barbara!"