d her with baby food,
but she got thinner and more elfish-looking. One day her nurse was
standing by while the other children were eating their dinner, and Polly
stretched out her arms to the rice and salt fish, and began to cry.
"Oh," said I, "perhaps she can eat;" and from that day the little one
ate her rice and discarded the nurse, growing fat and merry like the
rest.

Polly had a great talent for languages. Of course she learnt English and
Malay at once, hearing both languages from her earliest years. But how
she learnt Chinese as well used to surprise me. In 1866 I took Polly to
Hongkong. She was then nurse to our youngest child. The lady of the
house where we were staying accosted Polly in the pigeon English of the
place--a jargon mysterious to unaccustomed ears. It must be allowed that
Polly was not unlike a Chinese in appearance. She stared at the lady,
and then at me, upon hearing directions she could not understand. I
laughed. "Speak to Polly in English," I said, "and she will understand
what you mean." "Impossible," answered Mrs. M----; "my servants tell me
she must be Chinese, for she can talk in two dialects."

Polly married a Christian Chinaman afterwards, so her taste lay in that
direction. When I last heard of her, she was teaching in the day-schools
at Sarawak.

Mary married the schoolmaster, Mr. Owen. We brought Julia home with us
in 1869, and put her into a training-school for teachers in Dublin,
where she was much beloved. When we returned to Sarawak, in 1861, she
became the schoolmistress to the girls I then had in the house, and
others who came as day-scholars. She was a thoroughly good girl, and a
great comfort to me, but of course she married, a young man employed as
mate in the _Rainbow_, a Government vessel running between Sarawak and
Singapore. Some years afterwards Forrest died, and Julia married again,
an older man very well off. I have no doubt she is bringing up her
family in the fear of God, but I have not heard of her lately. I had
many trials with the girls, more than I like to recount. All the first
little family of Chinese girls we received in 1850 belonged to the tribe
who rebelled in 1857, and their relations carried them off when we were
driven from the mission-house. They were taken to Bau where their
relations lived, but what became of them in the terrible flight to the
Dutch country, when many were killed, and still more died of the
privations of the jungle, we never could h