es, she found it the
hardest task she had ever tried to do. "The African works well," she
said, "if you are at hand to guide and spur him on, but just leave him
and he sits down and talks or sleeps till you come back." So vexed
sometimes was she with the men dawdling over their trifling bit of work
that she would rise and box their ears, but they just laughed and
thought it a fine joke. Ma did not like to do such things: she wrote to
one of her little correspondents: "You would have thought your
missionary friend was rather hard-hearted, but hard things have to be
done and said when one's heart aches to say and do most melting
things."

Ma had more hope of the children than of the grown-ups, and she tried to
get hold of them and teach them. "Though they are black," she told a boy
in the Highlands, "they are just as bonnie and nice as if they were
white. Indeed the colour does not matter. We are all the same inside our
heads and hearts, and the little lads who know about Jesus are trying as
hard to be good and brave Christians as you boys who are white."

She was specially hopeful about the boys. Once a missionary spoke to her
about one who seemed to have no wish to be a Christian, and she replied,
"Dinna gie up hope. You dinna ken what is behind him and what he has to
fight against. His mother has maybe made him promise not to do
it--perhaps made him chop _mbiam_ (take the solemn oath) over it." And
after she talked with the boy she said, "He's a fine laddie, and ye'll
have him yet."

Many boys came to her for help in their troubles, and how patiently she
listened to what they had to say, and how wisely and tenderly she spoke
to them! She loved them all, and thought about them just as a kind
mother would have done. To those who were going to be taught and trained
she said, "You must be the leaders of your race and help them to rise,
but you can only lead others to Jesus if you follow Him closely
yourself."

That was always what she was telling her own children: "Keep close to
Jesus." "Bairns," she would say, "it's the wee lassie that sits beside
her mother at meal-times that gets all the nice bittocks. The one who
sits far away and sulks disna ken what she misses. Even the pussy gets
more than she does. Keep close to Jesus the Good Shepherd all the way."

When the Government took a number of the Ikpe lads to work on the new
railway being built to the coal-fields they came to Ma and said they
were afraid to go so f