“One small mite announced to-day that she was going to ‘stay with the Señora all the holidays.’
“‘But,’ said I, ‘you would not like to stay here and not go home at all?’
“‘Oh, yes, I should,’ promptly answered little Fatty; ‘school is much nicer than being at home.’
“I imagine the little ones do sometimes find this the case, as they do quite a lot of work in their homes. I remember one day teaching in my Scripture class something about a mother’s love, and I asked the children: ‘Now on cold, frosty mornings, when you are all cosily tucked up in bed, who gets up to light the fire and get the breakfast?’
“Of course I expected them to say in a chorus: ‘My mother’; but instead of that the answer came: ‘Why, my little brother, of course.’
“Last night, while most of the big ones were out at evening service, the little ones and I had great times hymn-singing. Two or three quite wee mites will sing alone, and it is wonderful how well they sing and how many hymns they know by heart. The brother of one small person was telling the native teacher that last holidays he built a new house for himself, and invited all his relations to the house-warming, and when the meal was over he said: ‘Now someone should sing a song. Who will sing for me?’
“‘Fancy’ added he, ‘my surprise when my little sister, who did not know a word of Spanish a few months ago, stood up before us and sang most sweetly and correctly a hymn that she had learned at school!’
“Sometimes our little Mapuche friends fall sick, and then the small patients are taken to Temuco, placed in the mission-hospital, and nursed and tended by Dr Baynes and his splendid family.
“At evening time, when the light begins to fail, the missionary turns his horse homewards, and as he rides rapidly over the plain, here and there the words of the vesper hymn sung by some Indian boy or girl are wafted to him on the evening air:—