"Perhaps it wouldn't be necessary to have them there," suggested Eola, who read between the lines with secret amusement.
"Oh! yes, it would; it's their reward; their right," replied Mrs. Hulver with conviction. "Any lady that's suitable to be a missionary's wife makes no objection; but she must be, so to speak, born to it. It's not a job that would suit you, miss. As William—that was my third—said when he heard that the Chaplain was going to marry the Colonel's daughter: 'If the church mouse takes the field mouse to wife there'll be a difference of opinion about the mode of living.' You could never put up with mission ways."
"You never did any mission work, I suppose," said Eola, turning the conversation from a subject she was not prepared to discuss with her housekeeper.
"No miss; but my husband William—that was my second—he tried his hand at it once, only once. He saw some of the canteen servants doing pujah to a stone image that stood under a tree behind the canteen. He went up to them in the middle of the pujah and said: 'Boys, you're all going to hell that way.' One of them that served the Presbyterian minister spoke up and said: 'No sar! It's the Roman Catholics that are going to hell, not us!' William walked away without another word; and when I asked him about it, he said that missionary work wasn't his job, and that he would leave it to those who knew more about it than he did."
"It was very good of him to make the attempt."
Mrs. Hulver looked pleased at the praise and approbation of the departed William the second.
"He was a right-minded man about everything, loyal to his God and his King; and he was the father of my only child."
CHAPTER XI
Eola sat at the tea-table in the verandah. Her brother, punctual to the stroke of four, came in without haste, crossing the compound from the college buildings to the private house. Punctuality, he declared, was his salvation. He could not have stood the rush of work had he not rigidly adhered to the hours of his meals. Afternoon tea was the one he liked best. He gave himself exactly thirty minutes for it. It was thirty minutes of solid rest.