“There's plenty of room yet for improvement,” replied her cousin; “for although it must be pretty hard for such a large family to live in such a small space and be cleanly, still they might try to be.”
“I should think the narrow space would be bad enough without the dirt.”
“Well, things have been and are yet pretty forlorn. But I am glad I have been able to effect a little change for the better.”
“But you said I got you into it,” said Marty, “and I don't see what I have to do with it, nor what mission work has either.”
“I should have told you that one reason I thought of offering this help to Mrs. Torrence is that it may perhaps give me an opportunity to say something to her on religious subjects. She takes no interest in such matters, never goes to church, and only allows her children to go to Sunday-school for what people give them. The Bible-reader of that district tells me that Mrs. Torrence wont listen to her, wont let her go into the room. She is a sullen, ill-natured kind of woman—I mean Mrs. Torrence—and hard to get at. So I thought I might possibly get at her in this way, and your account of missionary ladies going to zenanas to teach fancy-work in order to get a chance to tell the women of God and the Bible, put it into my head that I might try something of the same kind.”
“Oh, it is just the same,” cried Marty, “except that it's altering and mending instead of fancy-work. How curious it is that zenana work away off in India should make you think of helping a poor woman close by in Landis Court!”
“Have you got Mrs. Torrence to listen to you yet?” asked Mrs. Ashford.
“I haven't ventured to say anything directly to her yet, but I have been talking to the children about the Sunday-school lesson, explaining it to them and teaching them the Golden Text, and their mother is obliged to hear, whether she wants to or not.”
“That's just the way Mrs. Thurston says it is in those zenanas,” said Marty. “Many of the women at first don't care to listen to good reading and teaching, and want to talk about all sorts of other things, so the missionaries have to work it in the best way they can, and after a while the women get interested and want to hear. It seems as if they couldn't get enough Bible-reading and talk. Maybe that'll be the way with Mrs. Torrence.”
“We will hope so,” replied Cousin Alice.