and bodies?" Sez she, "You know what a fearful disease and crime
breeder it is in a temperate climate, but it is tenfold worse here in
this tropical land."

She wuz anxious to hear all the news from Jonesville, and I willin'ly
told her what Phila Ann had told me about Elder White, and the noble
work he was doin' in East Loontown, and I sez, "Missionary work is
jest as necessary and jest as important and pleasin' to God if done in
Loontown as in the Antipithies."

And she said she knew it. And I sez: "Elder White is working himself
to death, and don't have the comforts of life, to say nothin' of the
happiness he ort to."

Waitstill didn't say nothin', but I fancied a faint pink flush stole
up into her white cheeks, some like the color that flashes up onto a
snowbank at sunset. Life wuz all snow and sunset to her, I could see,
but I knowed that she wuz the one woman in the world for Ernest White,
the ideal woman his soul had always worshipped, and found realized in
Waitstill--poor little creeter!

I didn't know whether the warm sun of his love could melt the snow and
frozen hail or not--the sun duz melt such things--and I knew love wuz
the greatest thing in the world. Well, I had to leave the event to
Providence, and wuz willin' to; but yet, after a woman duz leave
things to the Most High to do, she loves to put in her oar and help
things along; mebby that is the way of Providence--who knows? But
'tennyrate I gin another blind hint to her before we left the
conversation.

Sez I, "Ernest White is doin' the Lord's work if ever a man did, and I
can't think it is the Lord's will that whilst he's doin' it he ort to
eat such bread as he has to--milk emtin's and sour at that, to say
nothin' of fried stuff that a anaconda couldn't digest. He deserves a
sweet, love-guarded home, and to be tended to by a woman that he
loves--one who could inspire him and help him on in the heavenly way
he's treading alone and lonesome." Her cheeks did turn pink then, and
her eyes looked like deep blue pools in which stars wuz shinin', but
she didn't say anything, and Robert Strong resoomed his talk with her
about her hospital work. And before she left he gin her a big check to
use for her patients; I don't know exactly how big it wuz, but it went
up into the hundreds, anyway; and Dorothy gin her one, too, for I see
her write it; Miss Meechim gin her her blessin' and more'n a dozen
tracts, which mebby will set well on the patients, if administ