CHAPTER XX.
COUSIN ALICE'S ZENANA WORK.
Mr. Ashford came up to the farmhouse about the first of September, and spent a week before taking his family home. So Marty did not arrive in time to be present at the first meeting of the band, but on the third Saturday of the month she was on hand with her budget of news. She had much to hear as well as to tell, and it would take a long time to relate all the missionary experiences of those travelled Twigs. Indeed for several weeks something new was constantly coming up. It would be, “O Miss Agnes, I forgot to tell about such a thing.” Or, “I just now remember what I heard at such a place. May I tell it?”
Edith had attended a grand missionary meeting at the seaside, and Rosa had gone with her mother and elder sister to a missionary convention, where she saw and heard several missionaries who were at home for rest, and also several new ones who were going out soon. Others of the girls had attended band meetings where they were visiting, or had joined with other young workers in holding meetings in hotels and cottages. But no one had, like Marty, been present at the forming of a band and helped it start. Nor had they, like her, become well acquainted with a real missionary.
“Oh, I just had the nicest long talks with her!” said Marty, meaning of course Mrs. Thurston. “I could ask her anything I wanted, you know. I even sat in her lap sometimes and hugged her real hard; and she would pat me and smooth my hair with the very same hands that used to do things for the little girls in India.”
“How elegant it must have been to have a missionary meeting in that pretty old garden, and such a nice missionary there to tell you things!” said one of the girls.
“It was,” replied Marty briefly but fervently.