“Yes, Master, I will go.”
And most immegiately her soul seemed to come back from somewhere, and she sez to me:
“I am told that there is a poor woman amongst the steerage passengers that needs me.” And she riz right up and started, like Paul, not disobedient to the Heavenly vision, not for a minute. She told me afterward that she found a woman with a newly-born child almost dying for want of help. She was alone and friendless, and if Sister Evangeline hadn’t reached her just as she did they would both have died. She wuz a trained nurse, and saved both their lives, and she wuz as good as she could be to ’em till we reached port, where the woman’s husband wuz to meet her.
Josiah acted stunted when I told him, but sez weakly, “I believe she hearn the woman holler.”
And I sez, “She wuz fainted away, how could she holler?”
And he sez, “It must be a heavy faint that will keep a woman from talkin’.”
The other missionary, Elder Wessel, I didn’t set quite so much store by. His only child Lucia wuz on board going out to China with a rich tea merchant’s family as a governess for their little daughter, and some one told me that one reason that Elder Wessel hearn such a loud call to go as a missionary to China was because Lucia wuz goin’ there.
Now, there wuz a young chap over in Loontown who had tried doctorin’ for a year or two and didn’t make much by it, and he thought he see a sign up in the heavens, G. P., and he gin out that he had had a call “go preach,” and went to preachin’, and he didn’t make so well by that as he did by his doctorin’, and then he gin out that he had made a mistake in readin’ the letters; instead of goin’ to preach they meant “give pills,” so he went back to his doctorin’ agin, and is doin’ first rate. That wuzn’t a call.
But to resoom. Elder Wessel jest worshipped this daughter, and thought she wuz the sweetest, dearest girl in the world. And she wuz a pretty girl with soft, bright innocent eyes. She wuz educated in a convent, and had the sweet, gentle manners and onworldly look that so many convent-bred girls have. She and Aronette struck up a warm friendship, though her pa wouldn’t have allowed it I spoze if he hadn’t seen how much store we all sot by Aronette.