e of your bad headaches. Do go out in the air. We can get on
without you for an hour."

So Mrs. Thurston took Marty and went into the grove back of the house,
and it was while sitting there on a rustic seat, with the magnificent
view spread out before them, that they had their missionary talk.

[Illustration: While sitting there on a rustic seat ... they had their
missionary talk. Page 158.]

Mrs. Thurston described her home in Southern India, and spoke of the
kind of work she and her husband did there--how he preached and taught
in the city and surrounding villages; how she instructed children in the
schools, and visited the ignorant women, both rich and poor, in their
homes. Often, when not able to leave home on account of her children,
she had classes of poor women in her _compound_, as the yards around the
houses in India are called. She also spent a good deal of time giving
her servants religious instruction.

"You know," she said, "it is very, very hot there, and we Americans can
only endure the heat by being very careful. At best we sometimes get
sick, and we must do all we can to save ourselves up to teach and
preach. That's what we go there for. If we should cook or do any work of
that kind, we should die; so we employ the natives, who are accustomed
to the heat, to do these things for us. Then, these servants will each
do only one kind of work. That is, the sweeper wont do any cooking or
washing; the man who buys the food and waits on the table wont do
anything else."

"That's very queer," said Marty.

"Yes, but it is their way. So we are obliged to have several servants.
But then the wages are very low. Altogether it does not cost any more,
perhaps not as much, as one good girl would in this country. They are a
great deal of trouble, too. They are not, as a rule, very honest or
faithful, and they have, of course, all the heathen vices, and sometimes
we have much worry with them. But what I was going to say is, that we do
our best to teach these servants about God. We used to have them come
in to prayers every day, and on Sunday I would collect them on the
veranda and try to teach them verses of Scripture, which I would explain
over and over again. On these occasions a good many poor, lame, blind
people from the neighborhood would also come. These people were so
densely ignorant that it was hard to make them understand anything, but
in some cases I think the light did get into their minds."

Then Mrs.