s uncertain. I am a frail mortal. You,
who are as mother and as father to this unworthy worm, would feel an
emptiness within you if I were to depart." "But, Yosepu, I hope you are
not going to depart." This was exactly what Yosepu had anticipated. He
smiled, then he sighed. "Amma! did I not say it before? 1 Corinthians
vii. 31: 'The fashion of this world passeth away.' Therefore I said, Let
me have my picture caught, so that when I depart you may hang it on your
wall and still remember me."

Yosepu's latest freak has been to take a holiday. "My internal
arrangements are disturbed; composure of mind will only be obtained by a
month's respite from secularities." Yosepu had once announced his
intention of offering himself to the National Missionary Society, and we
thought he now referred to becoming an ascetic for a month and wandering
round the country, begging-bowl in hand; for he solemnly declared as he
stroked his bony frame: "The Lord will provide." But his intention was a
real holiday. He would go and see the brother who had beaten him, and
forgive him. We suggested the brother might beat him again. He smiled at
our want of faith, and went for his holiday. A month was the time agreed
upon, but within three days he was back. He could not stay away, he
explained, with a shame-faced air of affection. "Within me pulled the
strings of love; pulled, yea, pulled till I returned." Faithful, quaint,
and wholly original Yosepu! He calls himself our servant, but we think
of him as our friend.

CHAPTER XX

The Menagerie

Fate which foresaw
How frivolous a baby man would be--

[Illustration: TWO VIEWS OF LIFE.]

THE event of the week, from a Tamil point of view, is the midday Sunday
service; so we take care of the nurseries during that hour, and send all
grown-up life to church. In the Premalia nursery the babies range from a
few days old to eighteen months, and sometimes two years. There is a
baby for every mood, as one beloved of the babies says; and the babies
seem to know it. We have a lively time there on Sundays; for by noon the
morning sleep is over, and nineteen or twenty babies are waking up one
after the other or all together. And most of them want something, and
want it at once.

These babies are of various dispositions and colour--nut-brown, biscuit,
and buff; and there are two who, taken together, suggest
chocolate-cream. Chocolate is a dear child, very good-tempered and easy
to