he Sisters are
almost demonstrative to her--and one or two local European girls: the
commissariat sergeant class, I should think."

"They don't sound attractive, and I am glad. You will depend the more
upon me."

Hilda looked thoughtfully at Miss Livingstone. "I will depend," she
said, "a good deal upon you."

It was Alicia's fate to meet the Archdeacon again that evening at
dinner. "And is she really throwing her heart into the work?" asked that
dignitary, referring to Miss Howe.

"Oh, I think so," Alicia said. "Yes."

CHAPTER XXVI

The labours of the Baker Institution and of the Clarke Mission were
very different in scope, so much so that if they had been secular bodies
working for profit, there would have been hardly a point of contact
between them. As it was they made one, drawing together in affiliation
for the comfort of mutual support in a heathen country where all the
other Englishmen wrote reports, drilled troops, or played polo, with all
the other Englishwomen in the corresponding female parts. Doubtless
the little communities prayed for each other. One may imagine, not
profanely, their petitions rising on either side of the heedless,
multitudinous, idolatrous city, and meeting at some point in the purer
air above the yellow dust-haze. I am not aware that they held any other
mutual duty or privilege, but this bond was known, and enabled people
whose conscience pricked them in that direction to give little garden
teas to which they invited Clarke Brothers and Baker Sisters, secure
in doing a benevolent thing and at the same time embarrassing nobody
except, possibly, the Archdeacon, who was officially exposed to being
asked as well and had no right to complain. The affiliation was thus a
social convenience, since it is unlikely that without it anybody would
have hit upon so ingenious a way of killing, as it were, a Baker Sister
and a Clarke Brother with one stone. It is not surprising that this
degree of intelligence should fail to see the profound official
difference between Baker Sisters and Baker novices. As the Mother
Superior said, it did not seem to occur to people that there could be
in connection with a religious body, such words as discipline and
subordination, which were certainly made ridiculous for the time being,
when she and Sister Ann Frances were asked to eat ices on the same terms
as Miss Hilda Howe. It must have been more than ever painful to these
ladies, regarded from the offici