Part 18 (1/2)

Every boy in school clothed to-day for first time.

Heaps of sick babies.

Full up with work till late at night. Dead tired.

Two women murdered on the way from market and their heads taken away.

Fever; trying to make a meat safe.

Sleepless night, baby screaming every few minutes.

Splendid fever-sleep full of dreams. Thank G.o.d for daily strength to go on however feeble. Thank G.o.d for the girls who got up and got me tea without any bother.

Reached Rest House at darkening. A fearful night of misery with mosquitoes and hard filthy ground on which we lay. Rose at first streak of dawn and never was so glad to leave a place.

Baby yelled all night.

Nothing done, low fever, but a very happy day.

Fever, stupor sleep. Lost count of days.

Useless after utterly sleepless night. Made such sermons and delivered them all night long.

Her friends in Scotland began to call her home, tempting her with visions of rest and peace and lazy days in gardens amongst flowers and all sorts of good and loving things, but though she thought of it with longing and tears, she said she must first build a house on the hill-top of Odoro Ikpe to be ready for a missionary when the Church sent one.

After that perhaps....

So she started to put up her last house, and because she was so feeble and her gang of labourers were such idlers and drones, she found it the hardest task she had ever tried to do. ”The African works well,” she said, ”if you are at hand to guide and spur him on, but just leave him and he sits down and talks or sleeps till you come back.” So vexed sometimes was she with the men dawdling over their trifling bit of work that she would rise and box their ears, but they just laughed and thought it a fine joke. Ma did not like to do such things: she wrote to one of her little correspondents: ”You would have thought your missionary friend was rather hard-hearted, but hard things have to be done and said when one's heart aches to say and do most melting things.”

Ma had more hope of the children than of the grown-ups, and she tried to get hold of them and teach them. ”Though they are black,” she told a boy in the Highlands, ”they are just as bonnie and nice as if they were white. Indeed the colour does not matter. We are all the same inside our heads and hearts, and the little lads who know about Jesus are trying as hard to be good and brave Christians as you boys who are white.”

She was specially hopeful about the boys. Once a missionary spoke to her about one who seemed to have no wish to be a Christian, and she replied, ”Dinna gie up hope. You dinna ken what is behind him and what he has to fight against. His mother has maybe made him promise not to do it--perhaps made him chop _mbiam_ (take the solemn oath) over it.” And after she talked with the boy she said, ”He's a fine laddie, and ye'll have him yet.”

Many boys came to her for help in their troubles, and how patiently she listened to what they had to say, and how wisely and tenderly she spoke to them! She loved them all, and thought about them just as a kind mother would have done. To those who were going to be taught and trained she said, ”You must be the leaders of your race and help them to rise, but you can only lead others to Jesus if you follow Him closely yourself.”

That was always what she was telling her own children: ”Keep close to Jesus.” ”Bairns,” she would say, ”it's the wee la.s.sie that sits beside her mother at meal-times that gets all the nice bittocks. The one who sits far away and sulks disna ken what she misses. Even the p.u.s.s.y gets more than she does. Keep close to Jesus the Good Shepherd all the way.”

When the Government took a number of the Ikpe lads to work on the new railway being built to the coal-fields they came to Ma and said they were afraid to go so far.

”G.o.d will go with you and keep you,” she said. ”Try and find out some one who preaches the Gospel and keep near him.”

On the fly-leaf of a Bible she gave one of them, she wrote:

_Udo Ekpenyon Edikpo._

_Trusting he will hold by the truths of this Holy Book when in the midst of strangers he may be exposed to temptation. Never forget prayer when reading.--Your friend_,

M. SLESSOR.

”This book,” she told Udo, ”will be a lamp to you and guide you.”

These young men returned none the worse for their exile.