"All right, dear baby, we won't talk about it then," for I was afraid that those little trembling lips couldn't hold in much longer. But she wanted to tell me about it. I soon saw that. She liked to talk about her "dear dead Daddy."
"He went to France," she said simply.
"Ah, he was a soldier?" I questioned.
"No, he was better than a soldier, my Mamma says. He did not go to kill; he went to help." And back of that sentiment and that statement I saw a world of struggle and ideals in a missionary home where the man felt called across the seas to be "in it" with his country and at last the refuge of the man who could go "not to kill but to help."
"He went to work with the coolies and he got the influenza and died last winter. We won't have any Daddy any more," and her little blue eyes were misty with tears. And so were mine, more misty than I dared let her see. And they are misty now as I write about it. And yours will be misty if you read about it, as they should be. That is something fine in you being called out.
Later I met the mother. She told me over again the story that little Doris had told me of the big Daddy who had felt the call to go to France in the Y.M.C.A. to help the poor "coolies," several hundred of whom were, by strange coincidence, going back to China on the same boat with us, and with that brave mother and those dear children. These "coolies" were going back alive, but he who went to serve them died. "Others he saved; Himself he could not save," echoed in my soul as that mother and I talked.
"I am going back to the Chinese to spend the rest of my life finishing Will's work. It is better so. I shall be happier."
"But the association there—everything—every turn you make—every place you go—will remind you of him," I protested.
"It would be what Will would want most of all, that I go on with his work. I go gladly. It will be the best balm for my sorrow."
And far above national friendships there loom these snow-white peaks of the sacrificial friendship the missionaries bear in their hearts for the people with whom they live, and serve, and die.