"Mary dear," said her mother, "you are so nervous, you had better let me open that letter."
"I'll manage, Mother," said Mary. She finally got it open, and she read:
Dear Miss Slessor, I take great pleasure in informing you that the Board of Foreign Missions accepts your offer to serve as a missionary, and you have been appointed teacher to Calabar. You will continue your studies for the teaching profession at Dundee. May God richly bless you in His service.
"Oh, Mother, I'm accepted! They're going to send me to Calabar!"
"Praise God from whom all blessings flow," said Mother Slessor. "That is wonderful news indeed. To Calabar! Oh, I'm so happy I could shout for joy!"
In March another letter came. This letter told her that she was to spend three months at a teachers' college in Edinburgh. All Mary's friends in Dundee gathered at the train as she got ready to leave for Edinburgh.
"Come, Mary," said Duncan, the tough boy from the slums, who was now a grown man and a faithful worker at the mission, "give us a speech."
"I can't make a speech," said Mary, "but I'll just ask you this: Pray for me."
While Mary was at the school in Edinburgh, some of the other girls she met there tried to talk her out of being a missionary. They did not want her to go off to Africa where there were wild animals and man-eating heathen, and all kinds of terrible sicknesses.
"Don't you know that Calabar is the white man's grave?" asked one of her school friends.