"I dare say it was also about the work in which I am so soon to engage, for that, Sybil, is full of grave responsibility; but now I think it is my turn to ask what your thoughts are," he went on, for at that moment Sybil was looking quite as grave as, just before, her father could have looked.
"I was remembering two verses of a piece of poetry that I learnt last term at school, which I think must have been written for missionaries," she replied.
Her father then asking her to repeat them to him, Sybil said:—
"Sow ye beside all waters,
Where the dew of heaven may fall;
Ye shall reap, if ye be not weary,
For the Spirit breathes o'er all.
Sow, though the thorns may wound thee;
One wore the thorns for thee;
And, though the cold world scorn thee,
Patient and hopeful be.
Sow ye beside all waters,
With a blessing and a prayer,
Name Him whose hand upholds thee,
And sow thou everywhere.
"Work! in the wild waste places,
Though none thy love may own;
God guides the down of the thistle
The wandering wind hath sown.
Will Jesus chide thy weakness,
Or call thy labour vain?
The Word that for Him thou bearest
Shall return to Him again.
On!—with thine heart in heaven,
Thy strength—thy Master's might,
Till the wild waste places blossom
In the warmth of a Saviour's light."
"Thank you, Sybil," said her father. "I am sure you will make a capital little missionary's daughter some day."
"To what part of China are we going, father?" she then asked; "to the same place where you were before?"
"No; quite in another direction. You know when I was last in China I was at Peking, in the north, and now I am to be in Hong-Kong, an island in the south; but we shall not go there direct, as I wish to take you to see several places before finally landing."
"Wait a minute, please, father," Sybil then exclaimed, "while I just fetch my map to look them out as you tell them to me." And as she spoke she ran off, to return the next minute with an atlas, in which she found these places as her father mentioned them: Shanghai, Amoy, the Island of Formosa, Swatow, Hong-Kong, Macao, and Canton.
"I wish, father, you would tell us some day all you can remember about Peking," then said Leonard, as he ran in and joined his father and sister, having till now been very busy, first coaxing his good friend the gardener to help him cut and put up some roosts in the fowl-house, and then showing his handiwork to his mother. "You know what I mean: something like what you used to tell us."