At the end of three months of steady work, she spent a few days with an uncle and aunt who were staying at Bonn, but the gay boarding-house life contrasted so unfavourably with the happy Christian fellowship at Kaiserswerth, that she was thankful to return to her duties, playfully writing:—"The nun will not soon again leave her cell, for it was with very nun-like feelings she met the world again." Yet she was no misanthrope. She did not bring to God a heart which had tried earth's pleasures and had found them wanting, nor a life jaded with pursuing them. From the first, she had cast aside the love of worldly things, and had chosen to be wholly the Lord's.
During the latter part of her stay at Kaiserswerth, her duties lay entirely in the hospital. In January she wrote:—"My duties are in the children's hospital, all ages from two to twelve. It is a new life for me in a nursery of sick children, and a busy one too, for every moment they want something done for them."
A month or so later she was appointed superintendent of the boys' hospital, a post of peculiar responsibility and difficulty. It was one, too, from which she shrank, holding the mistaken idea that she possessed no powers of government. Certainly it was a position to tax the patience, for the children were not too ill to be noisy and disobedient, or even sometimes to unite in open rebellion, while the task was not rendered easier by the necessity of speaking in a foreign tongue.
Altogether she had a very busy life. She rose at 5.O A.M. every day, and kept hard at work, with the exception of the intervals for meals and the Stille Stunde (quiet hour), until night. "The cleaning and keeping my dominion in order is such a business," she writes. "Sweeping and washing the floor of the three rooms every morning, two stoves which must be black-leaded weekly, each taking an hour, weekly cleaning of windows, tins, dinner-chests, washing-up of bandages, &c., besides the washing-up after each of our five meals, keeps one busy." She must have been strong in those days, for she wrote:—"I come over from the other house every morning at six, the ground white and windows frozen over; often at three in the afternoon the water outside is still frozen, yet night or morning I never put on bonnet or handkerchief, unless when I go out for a walk."
From the first the hospital patients with their varied needs were a great interest to her. Now it is a dying man, beside whom she has to watch, longing to minister words of comfort, yet unable to do so, fearing that her then want of fluency in the language might trouble him in his weakness. Yet as she heard the poor man's cry, "Lieber Heiland, hilf mir" (Dear Saviour, help me), her prayers, too, rose for him to the compassionate Saviour. Now it is a little boy with a bad back, terrible sores, and a racking cough, who would let no one else touch him. "Every night," she says, "I used to pray with Otto after they were all in bed, and he used to put his poor little arm round my neck as I knelt beside him; but last night (the night before he died) he said of himself, 'I will only now pray that Jesus may take me to heaven, and that I may soon die,' and as I had put my face near him to hear, he said, 'Lay your cheek on mine, it does me so much good.'"
We have seen quite enough of Agnes Jones by this time to know that she never shrank from a duty, however repulsive. Her love for her Master, and her desire to serve others for His sake, preserved her from any fastidiousness. In spite of her sensitive and sympathetic nature she could bear to witness the most painful operations without flinching, for she kept before her mind the ultimate good which would accrue from the present suffering.
One day news reached Kaiserswerth of the deplorable condition of one of the English hospitals in Syria. Sick and well, it was stated, were crowded together in a place where rubbish of every kind was thrown, an insanitary condition anywhere, but especially so in an Eastern climate. Helpers, they said, were much needed. Agnes longed to step into the breach, and in a letter to her mother she says:—"The English send plenty of money, but hands are wanting. It is no new thought with me that mine are strong and willing; I would gladly offer them. Could my own mother bear to think of her child for the next few months as in Syria instead of Germany? It is but temporary, and yet an urgent case. My favourite motto came last Sunday, 'The Lord hath need;' if He has need of my mother's permission to her child He will enable her to give it. This is but the expression of a wish, and if my own mother were to be made too anxious by the granting it, let it be as if unasked by her own Agnes."
Her standard of filial obedience was indeed a high one, though no higher than the standard of God's Word. Before this, in asking permission to remain longer at Kaiserswerth, she had written to her mother:—"Your wishes shall be my guide, now and for the future, as long as I am blessed with such a loving counsellor. I trust my present training in obedience will not be lost in reference to home."
Although she thought the whole training at Kaiserswerth invaluable she wrote long after:—"I believe all I owe to Kaiserswerth was comprised in the lesson of unquestioning obedience." Those who would rule must first learn to obey, and certain it is that she would never have been fitted to be afterwards the head of a large institution hundreds to care for and govern, had she not so truly imbibed the spirit of obedience.
While she had a profound admiration for Kaiserswerth, she could still see that the life of a deaconess, shielded though it is from the world, is not exempt from danger. Some fancy that the life of a deaconess, or of any one similarly set apart, must be much more free from temptation than that of any ordinary person. "I think," she wrote, "every one is as much called on as a deaconess is to work for Him who first loved us; but if this does not constrain us as Christians, neither will it as deaconesses, and certainly the 'Anstalt' (Institution) is a world in which the Martha-spirit may be found as well as in the outer world. There are many most deeply taught Christians here, many whose faces shine, but I should say, comparing my home life (but few have such a home) with that of the deaconesses here, I should say that, in many positions here, there are more, not only daily but hourly temptations."