Her attitude towards all this giving was one of curious detachment. She looked upon herself as an instrument carrying out the wishes of the people at home who supplied the means, and she gave them the honour of what was accomplished. Their gifts justified her going forward in the work; each fresh £10 note she took as a sign to advance another stage, so that, in one sense, she felt her Church was backing up her efforts. As she regarded herself as being owned by the Church, all the money she received was devoted exclusively to its service; even donations from outside sources she would not use for personal needs. One day she received a letter from the Governor conveying to her, with the "deep thanks of the Government," a gift of £25 to herself, in recognition of her work. The letter she valued more than the money, which she would only accept as a contribution towards her home for women. All the sums were handed over to Mr. Wilkie or Mr. Macgregor, who banked them at Duke Town, and they formed a general fund upon which she drew when necessary. She looked upon this fund as belonging to the Mission Council, to be used for extension purposes either up the Cross River or the Enyong Creek, or for the Home for Women and Girls when the scheme matured, and she never sought to have control of it. Mr. Wilkie was always afraid that she was not just to herself, and she had sometimes to restrain him from sending more than she required. It was the same later when Mr. Hart, C.A., had charge of the accounts. This explains why, on more than one occasion, she was reduced to borrowing or selling books in order to obtain food for herself and her household. There was money in abundance at Duke Town, but she would not ask it for private necessities. Sometimes also she was so remote from civilisation that she was unable to cash a cheque or draft in time to meet her wants.
Many a hidden romance lay behind these gifts that came to her—the romance of love and sacrifice and devotion to Christ. One day there arrived a sum of £50, accompanied by a charming letter. Long she looked at both with wonder and tears. Her thoughts went back to the Edinburgh days, when she was a girl, on the eve of leaving for Calabar. One of her friends then was a Biblewoman, who was very good to her. Always on her furloughs she had gone to see her in the humble home in which she lay an invalid, or as Mary expressed it, "lingering at the gate of the city." She thought she must now be dependent upon others, for she was old and frail. And yet here she had sent out £50 to help on her work.
If there was romance in the giving, there was pathos in the spending. Acknowledging sums she was bidden expend upon herself, she would go into detail as to her purchases—a new Efik Bible to replace her old tattered copy, the hire of three boys to carry her over the streams, seed coco yams for the girls' plots, a basin and ewer for her guest- room—"I can't," she said, "ask visitors to wash in a pail,"—a lamp, and so on. She sought to explain and extenuate the spending of every penny. "Is that extravagant?" "Is that too selfish?" she anxiously asked. After enumerating a number of things which she intended to buy for Ikpe house, she said, "Does that seem too prosaic? But it will clarify your views of Mission work, and make them more practical and real, for, you see, the missionary cannot go about like Adam and Eve, and the natives must be taught cleanliness and order, and be civilised as well as Christianised."
Her own small financial affairs had been in the hands of her old friend Mr. Logic, Dundee, whose death in 1910 sent her into silence and darkness for weeks. He had been like a father to her; to him, indeed, she chiefly owed the realisation of her dream to be a missionary. She did not know for a time how she stood, and as her purse was nearly empty, she was growing anxious, when a small amount arrived from a friend, to whom she wrote: "I have been praying for a fortnight for money to come from somewhere, as I have been living on 7s. given to the children by a merchant here who is a great friend of our household. So your gift is a direct answer to prayer. 'Before they call I will answer.'" She applied to Mr. Slight, another tried friend, who had been Treasurer of the United Presbyterian Church, and took a warm personal interest in all the missionaries, and after the Union was the accountant of the United Free Church. He made matters simple and clear to her understanding and set her fears at rest—she had no debts of any kind save debts of gratitude. Mr. Slight's death in 1912 again made her feel orphaned. "I had no idea how much I leant on him till he was removed, and it seems now that my last link with the old Church has snapped. What he has done for me through a score of years I can never acknowledge warmly enough." In later years her affairs at home were managed by Miss Adam.
Congregations continued to send her boxes of goods, whilst her own friends were unceasing in their thought for her. "I should never mention a want," she told them, "because you just take it up and bear the burden yourselves, and it makes me ashamed. Here are all my needs in clothing for the children and myself anticipated, and here are luxuries of food and good things, and all steeped and folded in the most delicate and tender sympathy and love. Surely no one has so many mercies as I have." She saw few pretty things, and had never the opportunity of looking into a shop window, so that the arrival of these boxes was an occasion of much pleasurable excitement to her and to the girls. Her only trouble was that she could not hand on some of the food to others; "When you have a good thing, or read a good thing, or see a humorous thing, and can't share it, it is worse than having to bear a trial alone." She was particularly grateful for a box of Christmas goods that came in 1911. She had been much upset by the local food, and she ate nothing but shortbread and bun for a week, and that made her better!
The people about her, too, were kind. Women would bring her presents of produce; one, for instance, gave her fifteen large yams and a half- crown bag of rice, and a large quantity of shrimps. "You are a stranger in these markets," she said, "and the children may be hungry."
V. WEAK BUT STRONG
She met with a severe disappointment early in 1912. The Calabar Council was willing to send two ladies to Ikpe, but thought it right to obtain a medical report on the site which had been given for the house. This was unfavourable; the Creek overflowed its banks for four hundred paces on one side and thirty on the other, and the surroundings of the house would be muddy and damp. She would not, however, acquiesce in the judgment thus passed, and remained on, and prosecuted the work as usual. The Council was very anxious for her to take a furlough, and her friends, personal and official, in Scotland were also urging her to come for a rest. She had now never an hour of real health or strength, and was growing deaf, and felt like "a spluttering candle," and she began to think it would be the wisest thing to do. As the idea took definite shape in her mind, she looked forward with zest to the renewal of old friendships. "We shall have our fill of talk and the silences which are the music of friendship." The East Coast of Scotland was now barred to her by medical opinion, but she had visions of the lonely hills of the south, and of Yarrow, and all that Border country where she had spent so many happy days, and would go there, away from the crowds and the rush.
Discerning a note of pity in the letters from Scotland, she bade her friends not to waste their sympathy upon her. "I am just surrounded with love," she wrote. It was to the children she referred. "I wake up in the early dusk of the dawn and call them, and before I can see to take my Bible, the hot cup of tea is there, and a kiddie to kiss me 'Good-morning' and ask, 'Ma, did you sleep?'" It was not wonderful that she loved those black girls. They had been with her from their birth. She had nursed them and brought them up and taught them all they knew, and they had been faithful to her with the faithfulness which is one of the most remarkable traits in the African nature. Mary could never abide the superior folk who referred slightingly to them because of their black skin, and she was too proud to justify her feelings towards them. Alice, the "princess," had now grown into a fine womanly girl, quiet and steady and thoughtful. One night in the dark she crept to "Ma's" side and shyly told her that some months before she had given her heart to Christ. It was a moment of rare joy. As neither Alice nor Maggie was betrothed-though often sought after-and they had no legal protector against insult, she decided to send them for training to the Edgerley Memorial School, where they would be under the influence and care of Miss Young, another capable agent whom she had led to become a missionary and with whom she had a very close and tender friendship. She regarded her as an ideal worker, for she had been thoroughly trained in domestic science. "I would have liked that sort of training better than the Normal training I got at Moray House," she said.
Meanwhile, as she was forbidden to cycle, her thoughts harked back to her old plan of a "box on wheels." She had never been reconciled to a hammock. "I feel a brute in it, it seems so selfish to be lying there, while four boys sweat like beasts of burden. To push a little carriage is like skilled labour and no degradation." She, therefore, wrote to Miss Adam, whom she called the "joint-pastor" of her people, to send out a catalogue of "these things." Miss Adam was, however, unwell, and the ladles of Wellington Street Church, Glasgow, hearing of the request, promptly despatched what was called a Cape cart, a kind of basket-chair, capable of being wheeled by two boys or girls. The gift sent her whole being thrilling with gratitude, as well as with shame for being so unworthy of so much kindness, but her comfort was that it was for God's work, and she took it as from Him.