She's little, but she's sweet, and absolutely without guile. I think we ought to have her.”
“Is 'guile' the same as 'guilt?” inquired Emma Jane Perkins.
“Yes,” the president answered; “exactly the same, except one is written and the other spoken language.” (Rebecca was rather good at imbibing information, and a master hand at imparting it!) “Written language is for poems and graduations and occasions like this—kind of like a best Sunday-go-to-meeting dress that you wouldn't like to go blueberrying in for fear of getting it spotted.”
“I'd just as 'lieves get 'guile' spotted as not,” affirmed the unimaginative Emma Jane. “I think it's an awful foolish word; but now we're all named and our officers elected, what do we do first? It's easy enough for Mary and Martha Burch; they just play at missionarying because their folks work at it, same as Living and I used to make believe be blacksmiths when we were little.”
“It must be nicer missionarying in those foreign places,” said Persis, “because on 'Afric's shores and India's plains and other spots where Satan reigns' (that's father's favorite hymn) there's always a heathen bowing down to wood and stone. You can take away his idols if he'll let you and give him a bible and the beginning's all made. But who'll we begin on? Jethro Small?”
“Oh, he's entirely too dirty, and foolish besides!” exclaimed Candace. “Why not Ethan Hunt? He swears dreadfully.”
“He lives on nuts and is a hermit, and it's a mile to his camp through the thick woods; my mother'll never let me go there,” objected Alice. “There's Uncle Tut Judson.”
“He's too old; he's most a hundred and deaf as a post,” complained Emma Jane. “Besides, his married daughter is a Sabbath-school teacher—why doesn't she teach him to behave? I can't think of anybody just right to start on!”
“Don't talk like that, Emma Jane,” and Rebecca's tone had a tinge of reproof in it. “We are a copperated body named the Daughters of Zion, and, of course, we've got to find something to do. Foreigners are the easiest; there's a Scotch family at North Riverboro, an English one in Edgewood, and one Cuban man at Millkin's Mills.”
“Haven't foreigners got any religion of their own?” inquired Persis curiously.