COUSIN ALICE'S ZENANA WORK.
Mr. Ashford came up to the farmhouse about the first of September, and
spent a week before taking his family home. So Marty did not arrive in
time to be present at the first meeting of the band, but on the third
Saturday of the month she was on hand with her budget of news. She had
much to hear as well as to tell, and it would take a long time to relate
all the missionary experiences of those travelled Twigs. Indeed for
several weeks something new was constantly coming up. It would be, "O
Miss Agnes, I forgot to tell about such a thing." Or, "I just now
remember what I heard at such a place. May I tell it?"
Edith had attended a grand missionary meeting at the seaside, and Rosa
had gone with her mother and elder sister to a missionary convention,
where she saw and heard several missionaries who were at home for rest,
and also several new ones who were going out soon. Others of the girls
had attended band meetings where they were visiting, or had joined with
other young workers in holding meetings in hotels and cottages. But no
one had, like Marty, been present at the forming of a band and helped it
start. Nor had they, like her, become well acquainted with a real
missionary.
"Oh, I just had the nicest long talks with her!" said Marty, meaning of
course Mrs. Thurston. "I could ask her anything I wanted, you know. I
even sat in her lap sometimes and hugged her real hard; and she would
pat me and smooth my hair with the very same hands that used to do
things for the little girls in India."
"How elegant it must have been to have a missionary meeting in that
pretty old garden, and such a nice missionary there to tell you things!"
said one of the girls.
"It _was_," replied Marty briefly but fervently.
"Oh, I wish I could help start a band as Marty did!" exclaimed Daisy.
"Perhaps you have helped, though you may not be there to see it start,"
said Miss Walsh. "Perhaps what you told those little girls from Georgia
about our band and missions in general will bear good fruit, and there
may be after a while a brand-new band in that far-away Southern town,
that little Daisy helped to start."
"Oh, I do hope so," said Daisy, smiling and pressing her hands together.
"I think it would be nice to ask Marty's mountain band to write to our
band and tell us what they're doing, and we'll tell them what we're
doing," suggested Edith.
"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 passed 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 washing 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 space and be cleanly, still they might try to be."
"I should think the narrow space 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 God 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.