Page:A Good Woman (1927).pdf/28

 a nightgown of pink outing-flannel with high neck and long sleeves, she knelt in the darkness by the side of the vast walnut bed and prayed. She was a devout woman and she prayed every night, never carelessly or through mere force of habit. Although she did not discount her own efforts, she looked upon prayer as one of the elements which had made of her life a success. Religion to Emma Downes was not tainted with ecstasy and mysticism; in her hands it became a practical, businesslike instrument of success. To-night she prayed with greater passion than she had known since those far-off days (whose memory now filled her with shame) when she had prayed in the fervor of an unbalanced and frightening passion for Mr. Downes, that the worthless scamp might be returned to her, for her to protect and spoil.

She prayed passionately that the Lord might guide the feet of her strayed boy back in the consecrated paths on which she had placed him; and as she prayed it occurred to her in another part of her mind that with Philip as the first in the field she might one day be the mother of the Bishop of East Africa. And when at last she lay in bed the awful sense of loneliness returned to claim possession of her. For the first time in years she felt an aching desire for the missing Jason Downes. She wanted him lying there beside her as he had once done, so that she could share with him this new burden that the Lord had seen fit to impose upon her. 

The mission, a little cluster of huts, two built of mud and logs and the others no more than flimsy affairs