Decide to search upstairs; turn out trunks, turn out cupboards, turn out drawers (incidentally discover and meditate upon various things needing mending); forget what I was looking for; go on searching for it; remember presently, and eventually run it to earth in my blotting-book downstairs, where, if I had had any sense, I should have looked in the first instance. Breathe freely, sit down—rather exhausted—to serious work.
A tap at the door; “May I come in?” Enter visitor No. 1. And then they follow in quick succession.
Finally, Abigail kindly undertakes to tidy up my papers “without disturbing a single thing!”*
Next day (if still wet) you repeat from * to *, as they tell us in the crochet patterns.
I had just got settled to work on the missing-and-now-discovered letter, when Abigail tapped and entered.
“I’m sorry to trouble you, ma’am, but could you spare me one of those Missionary books?” pointing to a shelf containing a selection of the annual reports of religious and philanthropic societies.
Now for some time past I had been trying to interest Abigail—who is a church member—in foreign missions. I rather prided myself that I had done it tactfully, not forcing it upon her, but just arousing her interest by taking her to attractive meetings. I found that she had even gone to one on her own account. Hence I was naturally pleased to find that she was anxious to follow up the subject; but as I did not consider an ordinary official report, with its small print, and balance-sheets and monotonous lists of subscribers, the type of literature best calculated to enthuse the novice, I reached down a small volume of bright stories of girl-life in India, well illustrated and prettily got-up.
“Here is just the very thing,” I said. But she took it reluctantly, dubiously, turning it about and looking it over in a dissatisfied manner.
“No,” she said, “it’s one like that I want,” pointing to a solid tome issued by one of the most revered of our missionary societies. “Can I have that one?”