Peggy's face fell.
"I never heard that the heathen talked French. I hopes as how they don't. I don't think they could be clever enough, Ellen. They be poor ignorant critters, that be what they be, and wouldn't never have the sense to speak in foreign langwidges—it be only eddicated ladies and gents that do that."
With this reasoning she recovered her cheerfulness, until she remembered sundry beggars she had seen in London who were not at all educated, but talked in strange tongues.
"Anyhow," she said, after a pause, "if they does speak French, I'll have to learn to speak it too. 'Tis wonderful what you does when you grows up, Ellen. Most things come easy then. And I'll ask God to help me, like He mostly does."
Ellen shook her little rough head doubtfully. "It don't sound as if you'll do it, Peggy. It don't sound real. I h'ain't heard much of heathen, but they live with lions and tigers, don't they? And I have 'eard tell that they eat one another up alive."
"I h'ain't heard that," said Peggy firmly, refusing to be deterred from her purpose. "I believe that's a make-believe in story-books. The gentleman the other evening called 'em 'poor critters sitting in darkness, callin' out for light.' And he said we must take it to them."
"Then when you be growed-up, you won't be a servant any more?"
"I don't know quite, Ellen. You see, I ain't quite sure about missionaries. Some on 'em p'raps goes to the heathen for a bit, and then comes 'ome agen. And if my missuses ain't dead, I don't know as how ever I shall leave 'em. But it isn't till I be quite growed-up, you see, Ellen, and my missuses will be very old then—and p'raps they will die—though I don't like to think of it."
Ellen subsided.
"You be a wonderful girl," she said. "I never have see'd any 'un quite so queer as you be!"