“I’m glad,” sighed Cricket, “that I’m not a dammer by trade.”
“If you were,” said Eunice, wisely, “you would be a strong man, and then it would not be hard work.”
“What are you going to do, girls, when you’re grown-up?” asked Hilda.
“I know,” answered Cricket, promptly; “I thought of it last night. I’m going to write hymns for the missionaries, and p’raps I’ll be a missionary myself. Anyway, I’d like to go to Africa and have all the bananas I could eat, for once.”
“I won’t be a missionary,” returned Hilda, with decision. “I don’t want to go to Africa. Horrid old skeeters and things, and cannibals to eat you up.”
“I’d convert them. That’s what missionaries are for,” answered Cricket, serenely.
“But you wouldn’t get a chance,” persisted Hilda. “They’d catch you and kill you and eat you up just as quick. You’d be in somebody’s stomach before you could say Jack Robinson.”
“But hymns, Cricket,” said Eunice, who had been meditating over the word, rather overcome by the ambition of her younger sister. “Would you write hymns like those in the hymnbook?”
“Yes. Of course they might not be quite so good just at first, but I could practise. I made up one last night. Do you want to hear it? It’s rather long.”
“Yes, indeed,” cried both the others, much impressed.