s said she was very kind to take such bother.

"Why," she wrote, "look at their kindness to me! The darlings,
with their perfectly natural stories and their ways of looking
at everything out of a child's clear innocent eyes, and the
bubbling over of the joys of a healthy life. It is a splendid
tonic, and just a holiday to me too, taking me with them to the
fields and the picnics and the sails on the lochs. Oh, one can
almost feel the cool breeze and hear their shouts. Don't you
think for a moment that though I am like a piece of wrinkled
parchment my heart is not as young as ever it was, and that I
don't prefer children to grown-up folks a thousand times over. I
would need to, for they have been my almost sole companions for
twenty-five years back. Oh, the girls at home are so bonnie with
their colour and their hair and their winsome ways. I just loved
to look at and to talk with them when I could. In church and
Sunday School they were a thing of beauty and a joy to me all
the time. I don't say that I don't love black bairns better and
know them better than white ones, for I do. But one must confess
to the loveliness of Scottish girls."

One of her most loving and diligent little correspondents was Christine
Grant Millar Orr, who stayed in Edinburgh, and was, at this time, just
thirteen, a clever girl, fond of writing stories and poems, and as good
as she was clever.

Her fresh young heart went out to the weary and lonely old lady in the
African bush who chatted to her so charmingly. "You have a genius for
letter-writing," she told Ma. "Your letters are so full of news and yet
so full of love and tenderness and your own dear self."

Here is a bit from one of Ma's letters to her:

What a bonnie morning this is! It will be dark and cold with
you. It is half-past six, and I am in the little verandah which
is my sanctum. We have had breakfast, but I am not yet able to
do any work, as I need an hour or so to get the steam up. So I
shall bid you a good-morning, and just wish you could be here to
enjoy our bush, and cocoa-nut and oil and wine palms which
surround us, all wrapped in a bewitching lovely blue haze from
the smoke of the wood fire. Yes, you would even enjoy the
pungent smell of the bush smoke, and would think there were few
places like Calabar.... But an hour later! Oh, it _will_ be hot!

Ma thus t