A Missionary Twig Part 24

"Oh, yes, yes!" cried some of the girls.

After a little talk the suggestion was adopted. They all wanted Marty to be the one to write; but she said, though of course she was going to write to Evaline, she could not write a good enough letter to be read at the band, and would rather Mary Cresswell wrote. Miss Walsh decided that would be the better way, as Mary was so much older and more accustomed to writing. It was too much to expect Marty to do.

So Mary wrote a very nice letter--the Twigs were very proud of their bright secretary--inclosing a note of introduction from Marty. In course of time a reply was received from Almira thanking them all for their kind interest in the mountain band, and accepting the invitation to enter into a correspondence. This correspondence proved to be very pleasant and profitable to both parties.

What pleased the Twigs particularly was that Almira told them the mountain band was very much indebted to one of their members, and it was likely the band would not have been formed that summer if it had not been for that member's help. Of course she meant Marty.

It must not be supposed Marty had boasted that she had done much towards getting the band organized. She only told in her childish way how it had come about, and the girls could not help seeing she had given all the aid possible.

Some of the other girls heard from members of bands they had met during the summer, and in this way several suggestions of ways of doing things were gathered up and acted upon. Miss Walsh said the whole summer experience had been very helpful.

One of Marty's earliest visits after her return was paid to Jennie in company with Cousin Alice. They found the invalid sitting up in the comfortable rocking-chair, looking very much better. She was overjoyed to see them and had a great deal to say. She was so pleased that she happened to be up, and insisted on showing how she could take the three or four steps necessary to get from the bed to the chair. She told them the doctor said that after a while, if she was very careful, she would be able to walk. "Not, of course, that skippy way you do," she said to Marty, "but to kind o' get along."

She also showed the crocheting she had done, and it was really very well done. As she seemed so much better, Miss Alice asked the doctor if it would hurt her to study a little. He said it would not, and Miss Alice undertook to teach her to read better, so that she could enjoy reading to herself. Jennie was glad of the chance to learn and made good progress, so that by Christmas, when Marty and Edith gave her the Bible they had talked of in the summer, she could read it quite well.

"I think, after a while, when Jennie gets still stronger," said Miss Alice one day at Mrs. Ashford's, "I will teach her something of arithmetic and writing, because she will never be able to go to school, and some knowledge of the kind will be useful to her. I will teach her to sew nicely, too, and when she is older she may be able to earn her living, even if she is lame and delicate."

"What a good work you will be doing, Alice," cried Mrs. Ashford, "if you help a poor, sickly, ignorant child to develop into an intelligent, self-helpful, and I hope Christian woman. Jennie will bless the day she first saw you."

"Ah, but she never would have seen me but for you and Marty. In fact I don't think I should have taken much interest in her if my attention had not been attracted to her by Marty's self-denying gift of that doll."

"And I don't believe _I'd_ have taken much interest in her if it hadn't been for hearing about the poor foreign children at the mission-band,"

said Marty.

"Everything comes around to the mission-band first or last, doesn't it?"

said Cousin Alice, laughing.

"Pretty near everything," replied Marty seriously. "And then there's Jimmy Torrence," she added presently. "I don't believe I'd have been willing to have my ulster pieced for his sake if I hadn't been hearing about those other forlorn children."

She was glad to see Jimmy looking so much brighter and better. Though he did not know he owed his country visit to her, he remembered the cake she had given him and the kind words she had more than once spoken to him, so he often lingered on the stairs to see her as she pa.s.sed in and out of Mrs. Scott's room, always greeting her with a bright smile.

One Sunday Mrs. Scott made him and his next older sister as clean and respectable as possible, and took them to church with her. The result was, some of the ladies of the church came around to see the Torrences, fitted the older ones out with decent clothes, and gathered them into the Sunday-school.

Soon after this, one afternoon Miss Alice came into Mrs. Ashford's sitting-room, half laughing, and exclaimed as she sank into a chair, "Oh, Marty, how you and your mission work are getting me into business!"

"Why, how?" demanded Marty.

"Oh, those Torrences!" said Miss Alice, still laughing.

"What about them? Do tell us," Marty insisted.

"Well, one day as I was going to see Jennie, I saw the two little girls younger than Jimmy on the stairs, and they did look so cold this kind of weather in their ragged calico frocks, and not much else on. So I just went home, got my old blue flannel dress, bought a few yards of cotton flannel, and took them to Mrs. Torrence to make some comfortable clothes for those poor children. And, Cousin Helen, will you believe it? I found the woman didn't know the first thing about cutting and making clothes!"

"That is very strange," said Mrs. Ashford. "How has she been getting along all this time with such a family?"

"She depends on people giving her things, and on buying cheap ready-made clothing."

"That is very thriftless."

"Yes. But I've heard it is the way so many poor people do. A great many of those women work in factories or shops before they are married, and afterwards, too, sometimes, and they have no time to learn to sew. When I found out about Mrs. Torrence I thought I would offer to show her how to cut and make those things. I thought doing that would be far greater charity than making them for her would be."

"So it would."

"To be sure she goes out was.h.i.+ng now and then, but she has time enough to sew other days, as she only has those two little rooms to take care of, and she hasn't been taking much care of them evidently."

"I thought they only had one room," said Marty.

"They have taken another now, as Mr. Torrence has steady work. Father got him a place in a livery stable, and he's not a drinking man, so they ought to get along."

"Well, how did Mrs. Torrence take your offer of help?" asked Mrs.

Ashford.

"She did not seem to like it at first. I suspect she thought I ought to make the garments myself. But after a while she came around and--"

"Your pleasant ways would make anybody come around," exclaimed Marty warmly.

"Thanks for the compliment," replied Miss Alice, smiling. "Well, the amount of it is I have been giving her lessons, and she is really beginning to do right well. The little tots look a great deal more comfortable, and now I am going to show her how to alter some of the clothes the Methodist Sunday-school ladies gave her, so that she will have something decent to wear herself."

"I think you are getting into business!" exclaimed Mrs. Ashford. "It is certainly very good of you to take all that trouble. And I should imagine it is not the most comfortable place in the world in which to give sewing or any other kind of lessons. Now Mrs. Scott is different.

Her room is always as neat as a pin."

"Oh, yes!" cried Miss Alice, "that reminds me there's more to my story.

These sewing lessons are actually making Mrs. Torrence cleaner and more tidy. The first day I went the table was all cluttered up, and when she cleaned it off for me to cut out on she looked rather ashamed of its dinginess, and muttered some excuse as she wiped it over with an old cloth. The next day that table looked as if she had been scrubbing it all night--it was so startlingly clean. She had scrubbed a chair, too, for me to sit on. Then I suppose she thought the clean table and chair put the rest of the room out of countenance, for on my next visit I found the floor had been scrubbed and the windows washed. When I told mother about it she said the woman should be encouraged, and sent her that striped rug that used to be in our dining-room, you remember. It was to spread down before the stove. The result of that was the old stove has been polished up within an inch of its life. Yesterday I took to the children those gay pictures that came last Christmas with the Graphic, and tacked them on to the wall. Now the next time I go I expect to see the walls scoured or whitewashed or something," and Miss Alice finished with a laugh.

"If you keep on you will work quite a change in their way of living,"

said Mrs. Ashford.

"There's plenty of room yet for improvement," replied her cousin; "for although it must be pretty hard for such a large family to live in such a small s.p.a.ce and be cleanly, still they might try to be."

"I should think the narrow s.p.a.ce would be bad enough without the dirt."

"Well, things have been and are yet pretty forlorn. But I am glad I have been able to effect a little change for the better."

"But you said I got you into it," said Marty, "and I don't see what I have to do with it, nor what mission work has either."

"I should have told you that one reason I thought of offering this help to Mrs. Torrence is that it may perhaps give me an opportunity to say something to her on religious subjects. She takes no interest in such matters, never goes to church, and only allows her children to go to Sunday-school for what people give them. The Bible-reader of that district tells me that Mrs. Torrence wont listen to her, wont let her go into the room. She is a sullen, ill-natured kind of woman--I mean Mrs.

Torrence--and hard to get at. So I thought I might possibly get at her in this way, and your account of missionary ladies going to zenanas to teach fancy-work in order to get a chance to tell the women of G.o.d and the Bible, put it into my head that I might try something of the same kind."

"Oh, it is just the same," cried Marty, "except that it's altering and mending instead of fancy-work. How curious it is that zenana work away off in India should make you think of helping a poor woman close by in Landis Court!"

"Have you got Mrs. Torrence to listen to you yet?" asked Mrs. Ashford.

"I haven't ventured to say anything directly to her yet, but I have been talking to the children about the Sunday-school lesson, explaining it to them and teaching them the Golden Text, and their mother is obliged to hear, whether she wants to or not."

"That's just the way Mrs. Thurston says it is in those zenanas," said Marty. "Many of the women at first don't care to listen to good reading and teaching, and want to talk about all sorts of other things, so the missionaries have to work it in the best way they can, and after a while the women get interested and want to hear. It seems as if they couldn't get enough Bible-reading and talk. Maybe that'll be the way with Mrs. Torrence."

"We will hope so," replied Cousin Alice.